


A Forest Fire

by exfactor



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-07-14 21:05:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 36,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7190444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exfactor/pseuds/exfactor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At twenty-four, she had woken up in her sixteen year-old body and in her sixteen year-old life. She had woken up to familiar walls plastered with bad charcoal drawings and sloppy watercolors. She'd shaken her head and closed her eyes and then closed them tighter. She'd run her finger along the furniture - her old desk, with the hearts etched into it with whiteout, her old lava lamp that would shatter at eighteen on college move-in day, her family pictures, of her mom, of her dad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sixteen

SIXTEEN

 

The night after it happens she just has so many questions, but the big one is: What about tomorrow? And then, if she could ask a follow-up, it would be: Does time stop or will it go on without me?  
  
At first, the questions are because of that project at work that has her considering quitting her job for good. The work is good money, enough to keep both of them afloat, though it's not something she's ever wanted to do and that hasn't changed in the two years that she's been there, even if her boss keeps telling her that she's doing good work. Still, she can't afford to lose her job now.  
  
With a little more thought, the questions are because without her, without tomorrow, Lexa has no one.  
  
\--  
  
At twenty-four, she had woken up in her sixteen year-old body and in her sixteen year-old life. She had woken up to familiar walls plastered with bad charcoal drawings and sloppy watercolors. She'd shaken her head and closed her eyes and then closed them tighter. She'd run her finger along the furniture - her old desk, with the hearts etched into it with whiteout, her old lava lamp that would shatter at eighteen on college move-in day, her family pictures, of her mom, of her dad.  
  
  
  
"Clarke? Come on, honey, it's time to get up." She froze at the sound of her mother's voice. It's a voice she hasn't heard in years. Not since college graduation. This room is pre- college graduation, pre- high school graduation even.  
  
There's a quick rapping on the door. "Clarke! Now." It's the hurried, frustrated tone that's familiar, if she thinks back to the last time, the last several times, in fact, that she talked to her mom.  
  
Her fingers are still frozen on the corner of the picture frame. She notices the chipped finger nail polish and the dried paint staining her palms. She looks down her body and sees her old gym tee-shirt and her favorite sleep shorts, considerably less threadbare. There's no scar on her shin. Her hips don't quite fill out these shorts in the way that she's used to.  
  
She turns toward the mirror above her desk. Her fingers trace her cheeks, a little chubbier, but not much. Still familiar. Then to her eyebrows, a little less kempt. Her nose, her eyes, her dimpled chin - the exact same.  
  
It's a dream. Certainly. She's dreaming again. Of home. Of how things once were. Of childhood pleasures and family and all of the things she misses so acutely.  
  
Except it feels so real. The smell of toast and bacon. Her mother's voice. The feel of the whitewashed old, creaking hardwood beneath her bare feet.  
  
"Clarke. Let's go." Her body freezes again and her eyes dart up to stare at the reflection of her bedroom door in the mirror. She wants to spend more time contemplating her youth in the mirror, running her fingers over possessions once lost to time, wondering if all of this really could be real. But her dad's voice is on the other side of the door and she just has to find out.  
  
"Dad?" She's standing in the hallway and sees the bathroom door cracked open, the electric razor buzzing from behind the door. She walks toward the light, toward the sound. "Dad?" she asks again, louder this time.  
  
She sees his broad shoulders first. She can see him turning toward her, opening the door. She doesn't want to look. She's had this nightmare before - her father's voice, her father's body, and then it disappears and she's jarred awake and there isn't enough oxygen in the room to fill her lungs. When it happens, Lexa wakes with her and pulls Clarke into her and despite the same nightmare every few months, Lexa's tether never strains. She always tugs Clarke back into the calm.  
  
It won't be him, she tries to convince herself.  
  
But it is.  
  
"What are you doing, Clarke?" He says as she shuffles closer. "We need to go in fifteen minutes."  
  
She can't answer. She can only look. She inches closer. She has to touch him.  
  
At any moment, she knows that she'll wake, shaking in Lexa's arms.  
  
"Clarke, go get changed. What are you doing?" Her hand is on his arm and she still must be dreaming and she feels tears prick her eyes. She's not entirely sure what she's doing except just making sure.  
  
"Dad?" She whispers.  
  
"What's wrong, honey?"  
  
If only for an instant, she's suddenly aware. She wipes her eyes and steps back out of the bathroom, back into her room. She's not awake and she's not in Lexa's arms and her dad felt so real, so solid, so strong. So different from the last time she saw him. She's not awake and she's not in Lexa's arms and she has no idea what's going on.  
  
She's not exactly sure how to wake herself up from this dream, but if she does, her father's gone and she's just on the other side of lonely, back at home in the tiny apartment she shares with Lexa. If she doesn't wake up from this dream, he's real.  
  
She resolves to stop trying. To stop shaking her head and hoping to feel Lexa's arms pulling her close. If only for this moment, in this dream, she'll have her father back instead.  
  
She pulls on the sundress and sweater that are hanging on her closet door and maybe she's not meant to wake up from this dream just yet.  
  
"Clarke, we really need to leave honey. Your grandmother is waiting on us," her mother's voice echoes from the bottom of the stairs.  
  
Some pieces start to come together. It's Easter morning. She's struggling to remember which Easter this is. Her mom's fixing her lipstick in the car and her dad is wearing the jacket that has the patches over the elbows. They're in the wagon. It could be any year in high school, really. Everything is familiar, but in a sickening way and she wonders if waking up from this is even an option.  
  
This is not some dream where she will wake up just before the big moment hits. The big moment has already happened. She's seen her dad, spoken to her dad, touched her dad. He was real. She's never made it that far in her previous dreams - or maybe they're nightmares. Those always stop just before she reaches out to touch him. Not this time.  
  
Nor is this some dream where the bizarre overtakes the ordinary, some dream where monsters lurk in the shadows and everyone’s speaking jibber jabber. Everyone seems to be behaving just as she remembers. (Except maybe for her and her shell-shocked, wide-eyed looks at everyone around her.)  
  
Her grandmother's house is the same as it's always been, a huge Victorian on top of a hill, just like a movie. When she was a girl, on snow days off from school, Clarke and best friend would glide down that hill and dangerously close to the stream at the bottom. After a few hours, they'd retreat to the room in the spire, sipping hot chocolate and whispering about boys.  
  
"Hi dearie," her grandmother clucks, then wraps her arms around Clarke. Her knit sweater scratches at Clarke's skin and for a moment Clarke sinks into feeling that everything is just as it always has been.  
  
"Hi, Grandma. Happy Easter." It's the third or fourth thing she's said since waking up this morning and her voice sounds like it's been out of use for years, scratchy and sore and tired.  
  
"Everything alright, Clarke?" she asks. Her fingers slowly grasp at Clarke's and her skin feels paper thin.  
  
"Yes." Clarke's fingers grip a little too hard. Her grandmother winces before Clarke realizes and quickly lets up. She's still just making sure.  
  
"Alright, love. We've got a feast today, and then you're going to help with the egg dying for the neighborhood children this afternoon."  
  
She remembers now. This is not new. This is not a dream. There are no strange monsters or eerie settings. This is sixteen and it certainly seems real enough.  
  
This is the Easter where her mom scolds her dad for playing too rough and ripping the patch on his jacket and the Easter where the skin on her hands is cracked and sore from dying eggs with the neighborhood kids for too long. There is nothing particularly special about this Easter, as far as she can remember, but at least she remembers now.  
  
Still, if this isn't a dream, if it really is real, what's so special about this Easter? Why is she living it all over again?   
  
Everything happens exactly as it should, with one exception. The exception is her. Not a moment goes by without someone asking if she's alright, without someone's hand grazing her elbow or her shoulder, without someone's concerned eye directed at her. She wants to ask:  _Am I dreaming? Are you real?_ but she doesn't want to worry anyone. She's worried enough about what's to come.  
  
  
  
She stays up late that night. She's not quite sure why her parents let her, but she finds herself in the living room at half past one. It's deep into the night. At this time last night, she was curled into Lexa, pulling her body tight, still hanging on. She was squeezing her eyes shut, blinking back tears, worried that Lexa could feel them threatening. She was breathing a sigh of relief when Lexa's sleepy form turned into her, lips ghosting her neck, hand idly tracing her back.  
  
Instead, tonight, she's up late and attempting to look interested in the novel she found in her book bag, which she remembers is for school. Really, though, she's caught up in glancing at her father's sleeping figure, gently snoring in the armchair facing the television. His hands have the faintest tint of greens and pinks and blues, too, just like her own.  
  
  
  
"Clarke," she feels fingertips brush against her scalp. "Clarke, let's go up to bed, honey." It doesn't sound like Lexa, but she thinks it should. She was asleep and dreaming and now she's waking up from this dream.  
  
Instead, her mother hovers over her from behind the couch. Her fingers move through Clarke's scalp and she offers a gentle smile.  
  
"Mom?" She's been wrapped up in her dad's presence all day and she's just now fully aware of her mom. She's noticing the softness of her eyes, her unforced smile, the way her fingertips soothe her. She wonders when she last interacted with this version of her mom. Whether she ever interacted with this version of her mom. Or maybe she was just a surly teen and this version of her mom was with her all along. And then, once everything happened, this version of her mom was lost forever.  
  
She stumbles up to bed, her mom anchoring her from behind. She misses this unconditional love, this love that doesn't take any work. Over the past few years, it feels like she's been working so hard for love and for so long. It's not that she minds working hard for love, it's just that it is so different from the unconditional type.  
  
She wonders if she'll wake up beside Lexa tomorrow morning. Lexa will be clicking away at her laptop already and Clarke will be dragging herself into the shower to get ready for work. Lexa will push her glasses up into her hair and whisper "Good morning, Clarke," in that way that Clarke hated at first but then couldn't live without.  
  
She wonders if she'll wake up in this house and in this bed tomorrow morning, instead. Her mom's heels will be clicking on the hardwood floors downstairs and Clarke will be dragging herself into the shower to get ready for school. Her dad will pull the electric razor back from his dimpled chin for a moment to say "Good morning, Clarke."  
  
And maybe she'll get to fix everything this time around.  
  
  



	2. Seventeen

SEVENTEEN

 

It's weird. Everything is definitely weird. She's never had to think about it (because why would she?), but now that she's living it, the difference between seventeen and twenty-four is dramatic. At seventeen, school is almost done and every moment in class is a total drag. At twenty-four, her hand shoots up at more than a few questions in AP Government and Calc and she relishes the chance to actually be good at some of the classes that she did so poorly in the first time around. At seventeen, it's exciting and intoxicating to sneak out of the house to go to a party. At twenty-four, she's said no to Raven and Jasper at every invitation. At seventeen, the idea of sex is both terrifying and tempting. At twenty-four, she can't describe how much she misses it. This second chance at her late teens has her struggling to readjust and wondering if she should even try. It's been a while, but it hasn't been that long and she finds that she doesn't miss what were once the pleasures of teenagerdom.   
  
But it's real. Everything is real. From her shitty seventeen year-old drawing skills (though she's "progressing much more rapidly than expected" according to Mr. Coolidge), to her best friend Raven, to the eleven o'clock curfew and the way that her dad clears his throat and crosses his arms when she comes through the front door a few minutes too late.   
  
Her parents don't feel real, though. It's in the way she catches her mother looking at her that's so different from what she actually remembers. There's a softness to the lines of her face. She's quicker to smile. She touches Clarke freely, as if to remind her that she's hers. It's in the ease of her father's laugh that she can't really remember noticing until there wasn't a laugh to notice.  
  
It took her six months to adapt, but eventually she finds herself acclimating to sixteen, then seventeen. On rare occasions, she has to rebuke herself for fleeting moments of feeling accustomed to her father's presence. That was the one thing she refused to adapt to. If this was going to be her chance to fix everything, she knew she had to remain vigilant when it came to her dad.   
  
It's exhausting.  
  
Everything is real and it's obviously so weird and there are so many moments where she's grateful that someone or something somewhere has allowed her to do this all over again. There's just one exception. Lexa.  
  
The harder she tries to remain vigilant, to be grateful, to keep everything in perspective, the more she misses her. Lexa's not a part of this redo. There are four years between them still.   
  
Four years before they're twenty-one and standing face-to-face in a building in downtown DC and Lexa's green eyes make her forget the question. Four years before they're twenty-one and Lexa tests a shy smile as she passes Clarke in the hall one morning. Four years before they're twenty-one and it appears that Lexa's summoned up the courage to introduce herself to Clarke, to this girl who won't stop looking at her, but maybe that's because she can't stop looking back.  
  
She misses Lexa more and more, until she sees Lexa in every moment of every day.   
  
Her arms ghost around Clarke as she drifts into sleep each night. Her soft whisper tickles at Clarke's ear when she wakes in the morning. Her bright green eyes stare back at her from Clarke's latest portrait in Mr. Coolidge's class.  
  
She falls into some of Lexa's routines, just to be reminded of her. She finds herself hate-watching old episodes of Law & Order and hears Lexa cite criminal code beside her. She finds herself listening to Radiohead and hears Lexa murmuring the lyrics from the other room. She finds herself driving into the city to eat varenyky and hears Lexa's critique, whispering "this is not how Mama makes them."  
  
Things weren't easy for them at twenty-four, but without her Clarke realizes that she misses her more than she ever knew she would.  
  
She knows that they'll cross paths and she knows exactly when, but six months pass in this weird experiment and the more she misses her, the more she looks for a way to seek her out, if only to see her from across the room. She figures that might be enough to tide her over for a while, hopefully until twenty-one. She just wants to see her - young, awkward, high school Lexa. A Lexa she'd only ever seen in pictures.  
  
She doesn't consider the consequences.  
  
\--  
  
It took a long time to plan out and build up, but once she had a solid idea, she couldn't let it go.  
  
She'd joined the mock trial team. Absent a job and her own car and cash reserve, it was the only way she knew she could get to Lexa.  
  
  
  
It's not really a thing that people do, but she does it anyway. She sits in on the New York team's trial against New Jersey. Her own team's just finished their trial and she figures no one will really notice if the witness from the Maryland team lingers for a little while. She takes ages to sort through her files and when she hears the voices of other teams enter the room, she finds that she can't look up.  
  
Part of it is terrifying anticipation. She's been thinking about Lexa for so long - months - and now that they're in the same room her heart has climbed out of her chest and her breath won't catch.  
  
But another part of it is pure fear. Suddenly she realizes the potential consequences. It's a fear that she's tempting fate, a fear that after this, everything will change. Maybe life at twenty-four was just the way it was supposed to be. Maybe, in this redo of life, she's not supposed to do anything differently.  
  
She hears young Lexa's harried voice from across the room and fear and anticipation are cast aside.  
  
She's shorter. That's the first thing she notices when she looks up. She's probably about Clarke's height and she figures that Lexa must have a growth spurt between seventeen and twenty-four because she's got a few inches on Clarke at twenty-four.  
  
When she looks up from her notes, her eyes meet Clarke's for an instant and Clarke can't help but miss twenty-four and their small apartment and that tattoo on Lexa's back. She looks into Lexa's eyes for as long as she'll let her before Lexa turns away and Clarke realizes that she's not supposed to stare. Not now. Not at seventeen.  
  
Lexa's voice is different, too. She can't tell exactly how yet, just that it's different. Maybe it's the strain of the event.  
  
  
  
Initially, when she made her plan to run into Lexa, just to see her, she'd decided that she'd only get a quick glance at her from across the room. Instead, the trial starts and she's stuck. The quick glance turns into ninety minutes of a racing heartbeat, sweaty palms, eyes trained on her, and a bottom lip swollen from tucking it between her teeth.  
  
Now that they're facing each other in the hallway, she can't stop herself.  
  
She doesn't consider the consequences.  
  
"Good job today, New York."  
  
"Oh, hello. You are Maryland, right?" Lexa's eyes are wide as she answers the question and Clarke can't help but stare again, even though she knows she's not supposed to. They're not twenty-four and in love. That's what Clarke has to keep telling herself. No, they're seventeen and meeting for the first time, even if it is tempting fate.  
  
Still, she looks into Lexa's familiar eyes and nearly forgets the question.   
  
"I was only a witness," she says, shaking her head and looking away, looking for a moment of reprieve, "but yes, Maryland."  
  
"I am Lexa." She extends her hand and Clarke pulls her bottom lip between her teeth again to hold back the grin. Lexa's stilted, slightly accented speech and her business-like demeanor are much stronger at seventeen. Clarke remembers this Lexa from twenty-one, this formal Lexa, this Lexa who fights to get rid of that accent she's been surrounded with all of her life. But this Lexa will fade by twenty-four, and Clarke knows that she has everything to do with how these things will change in Lexa.  
  
"Nice to meet you, Lexa. I'm Clarke." Her hand is soft and more than a little sweaty and Clarke holds onto it for longer than she should. She doesn't want to say it. Really, she wants to scream it.  _I love you. We're in love. Love me._ She can't say it, but she thinks it and she clings with her sweaty palm and she pleads with her eyes.  
  
"Nice to meet you too, Clarke." It had been so long since she'd felt Lexa's lips wrap around her name. She finally releases Lexa's hand and doesn't miss that Lexa wipes her palm on her pressed slacks.  
  
"You were really impressive during your trial earlier."  
  
"Thank you."  
  
"Have you been doing mock trial for long?" Since freshman year, she thinks to herself.  
  
"Since freshman year, yes. It has been a lifelong dream to be a lawyer." Clarke wants to call her on her bullshit. There was a time when she heard that line repeated over and over again, as an excuse, as a reason, as a lifeline. There was a time when hearing that line ignited every ounce of fury in her, until she unleashed on Lexa. She knows better than to believe Lexa, but she's not supposed to know better, and if this is her chance to fix everything, maybe this is a part of that everything.  
  
But her twenty-four year-old brain is not her seventeen year-old brain and the "consequences be damned" mantra she'd repeated leading up to seeing Lexa suddenly stifles and chokes her.  
  
"You'll be a great lawyer, I'm sure," she says instead. And she has reason to be at least relatively sure. At twenty-four, Lexa is at the top of her class. Even if she knows that Lexa's motives are all bullshit, she's just not sure what else to say and soothing words slip out instead.  
  
"Thank you. Is that why you joined mock trial, as well?"  
  
"No, actually," Clarke starts. She's been repeating this line herself since the beginning of senior year, since the intro meeting in Mr. Hall's room, then to her shocked parents when they ask about her late-blooming interest in the law. "Mock trial isn't entirely uninteresting, but it appealed to me as a chance to travel and meet new people."  
  
"Ah," Lexa gives her a half-hearted smile, as though she's disappointed in Clarke's reason. A throat clears behind her and Lexa whips around, then back to Clarke.  
  
"My apologies, Clarke. I must go now." There's a tall man standing behind her wearing a faded polo shirt and slightly wrinkled khakis. It's Lexa's father. He's younger, of course, but those same deep wrinkles line his face as though he'll never stop worrying - about money, about pride, about whether it was worth all the trouble. Clarke's never had much of a relationship with him and the way he's looking at her now makes her think that that's just the way he is.  
  
"No," Clarke exclaims, before she has time to think about what to say next. She needs an excuse, a way to make Lexa stay.  
  
Lexa's eyes widen and her father glares at Clarke as her eyes flit between them and the ground.  
  
Lexa steps closer and finds Clarke's eyes and Clarke just knows that she's planted the seed. It's in the way that Lexa breath speeds up, in the way that she holds Clarke's gaze, in the way her brow furrows. "What is it, Clarke?"  
  
"I just...it was nice to meet you." Clarke wants to touch her again. It's going to end and they're not going to see each other for a while and she wants something else to hold her steady. It's been six months without her and she wants just one more thing before she goes, even if this isn't exactly 'her' Lexa.  
  
Lexa's brow still furrows. "It was nice to meet you, too."  
  
Lexa gives her one last look and turns to her father. Clarke hadn't noticed it before, but she sees one small braid from under Lexa's curls and is reminded of a late night at twenty-one, not long after they met (for the first time), with her fingers at Lexa's scalp and her lips at the back of her neck. The next day, Clarke saw those late night braids that she'd woven through Lexa's hair and felt like falling.  
  
She can't help but try one more thing. Consequences be damned.  
  
"Wait. Lexa," she calls out before Lexa gets too far away. "Do you think we could...um...exchange email addresses? I'd like to keep in touch."  
  
  
  
Her email address gets tacked to a corner of Clarke's bulletin board above her desk. It should make her feel better, she thinks, but instead it's a terrifying reminder that she's tempted fate. That their meeting at twenty-one may be in jeopardy. That everything between them will be different because she just couldn't resist finding her. So for now, Lexa's email address sits tacked to a corner of Clarke's bulletin board above her desk and she tries her best to ignore it every single day.  
  
  
  
She's just finished her homework one Saturday afternoon when she catches her mother reading in his chair. She'd had it in her mind that that chair, the one with the worn linen and the rocking footstool, was her father's alone. She never remembered her mother in that chair, but her father's away on business and her mother's asleep in his chair, her book slipping down her lap, threatening to crash to the floor and wake her mother up.  
  
When she moves the book off of her lap, her mother blinks awake.  
  
"Thanks, honey," she whispers, voice rough and sleep-heavy.  
  
She smiles and looks at her mom in the chair for a moment longer. Maybe she does remember her in this chair. It feels familiar, like she's seen this sight before. As she becomes more sure of the sight, she also becomes more sure that there was a time that she just didn't care that her mother slept in her father's chair when she missed him. She becomes more sure that she used to breeze past anyone in the chair, mother or father, on her way out with friends.  
  
"Mom," she starts before she realizes that she probably shouldn't, before she realizes that she's tempting fate again. "Mom, promise me that if anything ever happens, you'll tell me." Hot tears suddenly run down her cheeks and she quickly wipes them away.  
  
"What do you mean 'if anything ever happens'?" She sounds like she's still waking up and of course this feels like it's coming out of nowhere. They've always been a perfect little family of three. The worst thing that ever happened was possibly that afternoon that Clarke fell from Raven's swing set and her mom rushed her to the ER to get her arm set and put in a pink neon cast.  
  
Her mom leans forward and uses her thumbs to gently rub away the next wave of tears. "Clarke, honey, where is this coming from?"  
  
She can't answer for so many reasons. Fate. Fear. Desperation. She purses her lips tight and barely holds back a sob.  
  
Abby's brow remains furrowed when Clarke doesn't answer, but she answers Clarke's question anyway. "Of course we will," Abby whispers, awkwardly pulling seventeen year-old Clarke into her lap and brushing her fingers through Clarke's hair.  
  
"Just...promise?" Clarke sobs into her mom's neck, burrowing her head a little deeper.  
  
"I promise," she whispers.  
  
She's been thinking about this since she saw her dad in the bathroom that Easter morning. They need to promise. She needs to know this time around. If she knows, maybe she can do something. It's tempting fate, but that's exactly what she wants in this case. Fate be damned.  
  
  
  
She finally caves and goes to a party with Raven that night. It's near the end of the school year and Jasper's parents' house is sticky and hot and smells like booze and sweat. It's been such a long time since she's been to a party. On a Saturday night at twenty-four, she too often found herself working on a project for work or curled into Lexa, while Lexa flips pages in one of her law books and huffs in bed next to her. At this seventeen, she's too often found herself squeezing every moment out of her parents - tagging along to work, running errands, watching a PBS miniseries - anything to be close.  
  
But tonight her dad's away and her mom is out with friends and she's home alone. She's spent a few nights like these lost in what's to come and finds herself waking up with a hoarse voice and tear streaks run dry. She's spent other nights like these touching every one of her dad's books, sitting in his chair, laughing at old pictures. She hasn't looked at these pictures since well before her first chance at seventeen.  
  
But tonight she's itching for human contact, for a little fun, for some time with Raven. At twenty-four, she sends an email off to Raven every other month and occasionally gets a couple words in terse response. But at seventeen, they're as close as can be. According to Abby, Raven is Clarke's "sweeter, nicer fraternal twin." She's at the Griffin house twice a week for dinner, schmoozing with her parents, and the rest of the week conniving to get Clarke to let loose and party.  
  
So when she lets Raven convince her to go to Jasper's party, she's not expecting for it to turn into what it does. She wants to drink and laugh and forget about fate and consequences and what's to come. She wants a chance to actually be seventeen again, not a weighed-down twenty-four year-old in a seventeen year-old's awkward body.  
  
Instead, she gets too drunk. She loses Raven some time just past midnight as her mind goes fuzzy and her body sinks into the couch in Jasper's parents' living room. There are kids all around.  
  
Ping pong balls dribble and come to rest at her feet. That could be what sparks it. The last time she played beer pong was probably one of those intern parties with Lexa in DC at twenty-one. That was before everything got so serious.  
  
A couple briefly falls into the couch for a quick makeout before they see Clarke tucked into the other end. That could be what sparks it, too. She misses lips and fingertips, breathy moans and thighs that pull her closer. She knows that only Lexa can sate her.  
  
But what really does it is the music. Somehow, she'd forgotten about Jasper's love for Radiohead and when "True Love Waits" finishes, cheeks tear-stained, she walks the nearly two miles home.  
  
Raven calls her the next day and Clarke tells her that her mom picked her up.  
  
  
  
Clarke Griffin <clarkegriffs615@emails.com>  
to Lexa Ivanenko <livanenko@emails.com>  
  
Lexa,  
  
I'm not sure if you remember me, but we met at the Mock Trial Invitational in the fall in New York. I saw this article on the "Top Ten Ways to Prepare for Law School" and it made me think of you.  
  
Hope you're doing well.  
  
Clarke  
  
  
  
Lexa Ivanenko <livanenko@emails.com>  
to Clarke Griffin <clarkegriffs615@emails.com>  
  
Clarke,  
  
Yes, I do remember you - the witness of Maryland. I am doing well. I hope the same for you.  
  
Thank you for the article. My father actually printed it out for me several months ago, but I'm grateful for the reminder.  
  
Lexa


	3. Eighteen

EIGHTEEN

 

They exchange emails sparingly over the summer - an email about summer plans, an email about vacations (Clarke) or lack thereof (Lexa), an email about preparing for college. Clarke often finds herself pushing the conversation and Lexa seems happy to oblige. Aside from finding out that Lexa will also be in DC for college (which she already knew), it's not what she had hoped. That flirty edge that set her alight at twenty-one is conspicuously absent from their interactions at eighteen and she doesn't want to push anything. No damning the consequences.  
  
Still, at this eighteen, most things feel just like they felt at that eighteen. Her dad still drops the box with her lava lamp on move-in day. She still meets Octavia and Lincoln and Bellamy in the first week of classes. She is still inspired by Indra, her Studio Art professor, when she offers to spend some extra time with Clarke. She still convinces herself that she should take a business class, if just to explore a second option.  
  
At this eighteen, though, there are a few things that are very different. After move-in day, she finds herself making plans to return home within two weeks to visit her parents. At that eighteen, she was running as far away as she could, even if the campus was just a short forty-five minute drive away. At this eighteen, she's calling them every night, and sometimes during the day. At that eighteen, she was plotting hook-ups with a girl from the fourth floor of her dorm, in the hopes of telling Raven every sordid detail. At this eighteen, she's considering plotting a run-in with Lexa, only partially with the hopes of a sordid story. At that eighteen, she couldn't even fathom Lexa.  
  
She's not unhappy to relive college, in a way. It's a time of exploration and excitement, even if it is the second time around. There's the little things, like wearing flip-flops to take a shower, or finding just the right sunny spot in the library to study for her statistics quizzes. And there's bigger things, like the way that girl on the fourth floor (yes, that one) smiles at her for a little too long, or the pleasant buzz of her first football game and the frat parties that follow.  
  
In reality, though, she knows now that even those bigger things aren't really that big.  
  
It's December and nearing first semester final exams when she wears down. The exploration and excitement of the first year of college has dimmed. Octavia and Lincoln and Bellamy are quickly becoming some of her best friends and Studio Art is capturing more and more of her attention, but something's still amiss. Maybe it's that she's done this already. Even the stuff she didn't do the first time around, like those biweekly trips out to the Maryland suburbs that gave her so much pleasure in the fall aren't quite enough to quell the ache. Or maybe it's just a different kind of ache.  
  
She knows it's Lexa. She knows that the occasional email is not enough. She never thought she'd miss her this much.  
  
And she knows that, so far, tempting fate hasn't actually resulted in any change in fate. Her lava lamp still broke on move-in day. Octavia is still her roommate. Her parents still remind her at least once a week that she should consider adding the business major to her studio art major.  
  
She's still at Georgetown and Lexa's still at American, less than an hour's metro ride away.  
  
That reminder sits in her mind, especially on Sundays, when she tucks herself into a sunny carrel in the Environmental Science library. Usually, the reminder doesn't sit too long. Just long enough for her to wonder what Lexa's doing. (She knows that she's in the library, just like Clarke, which then leads her to wonder what she's studying, what she's wearing, whether she's still make-up free, like she was back at the mock trial tournament, or whether she's started her experimentation with the eyeliner that Clarke's used to.) Soon enough, she's lost in her own studies and her thoughts of Lexa fade until the evening. Until their typical return, just after she closes her eyes, just before she falls asleep.  
  
But the Sunday before her last week of classes, as she settles into her sunny carrel in the library and wonders what Lexa's doing, she finds herself packing her books back into her bag. She chances it. Fate be damned.  
  
An hour later, she's in the American University library and a half-hour after that, she's watching Lexa from across a cluster of desktop computers and buzzing student foursomes. She's taking up an entire table with books and papers, a laptop, and a travel coffee mug. Her hair is pulled back into her messy "Sunday study-bun" (a term that Clarke coined a few weeks into their senior year) and her leg is tucked underneath her body as she shifts between a textbook and a small paperback and a spiral notebook. The eraser of a pencil pushes at the side of her mouth when she's not scribbling something into the margins.  
  
Clarke's not sure how long she watches her or how her feet carry her to the edge of Lexa's table.  
  
"Lexa," she whispers. It's not really meant to get her attention, more to test it out. She hasn't said her name in so long.  
  
Lexa startles and drops the pencil, a silent crash on the dirty carpeted floor. "You...Clarke, right?" Her lips part slightly and her eyes widen. No eyeliner yet. Still beautiful. And Clarke's nearly forgotten that they only really met that once. Lexa's occupied her mind nearly every night for a year, but the same isn't true for Lexa. No wonder she looks startled and quite a bit confused.  
  
"Hi." Clarke's voice is still barely there as she matches Lexa's wide-eyed stare with one of her own. Her hands feel clammier and her mouth drier than it did moments ago. Her mind can't figure out what else to say, but she knows that just a simple "Hi" hangs between them and she feels dumber for it.  
  
Lexa breaks her gaze after a few more moments, as if she's scolding herself for her lack of decorum. She bends down to pick up the pencil from under the table and Clarke hears a muffled "What are you doing here? I thought you said you went to Georgetown."  
  
"I do," she replies, a little too loudly. Perhaps a little too defensively. She earns a glare from a girl at a table nearby and she sits down. "I couldn't find a book in our library, so I thought I'd come over here to check out your library," she finishes in a whisper. She'd decided that would be her reason long before she'd left. Lexa wouldn't question the validity of an inter-campus library sharing agreement. In fact, she'd probably already taken advantage of it herself.   
  
"Oh. What book?"  
  
"I brought you this," Clarke says instead, pulling a package from a brown paper bag. She hasn't thought that far ahead anyway. Better to distract.  
  
She'd stumbled on a small corner store a few months ago and bought a few packages in moment of weakness. She'd never liked the stuff much, but she opened a package that night just to smell a familiar smell of New York and twenty-four and Lexa. "I mean," she continued, "I hoped I might run into you, you know, since you go here and I'm here, so..."  
  
Lexa pulls the package from the bag once it's in her possession. Her eyes widen again when she sees it's her favorite brand of halva, the one with sesame.  
  
"Ok?" It's more of a whisper, as if she wants to remain guarded, but is struggling. That much is clear as she reverently tucks the package back in the paper bag and then into her book bag.  
  
"I just...thought...I figured maybe you liked it or something...you would like it, I mean." She runs a hand through her hair and gets stuck half way through, cursing the beanie she'd tucked it under on her way over. "I mean, I heard your accent and there's this store down the street from my dorm and I was thinking about you one night, after you sent me an email, of course, and..."  
  
"Clarke," Lexa interrupts, saving Clarke from herself. "Thank you. I do like it."  
  
It takes another moment for Clarke to collect herself, for her to silently thank this Lexa for saving her from full spaz mode. She'd figured that halva would be the way to Lexa's heart. It usually was at twenty-four, after a day spent in the law library, or a night of heated tempers and slammed doors.  
  
But this time, it doesn't seem to yield quite the same results. Lexa looks over her guardedly, shyly, despite seeing Clarke on the edge of panic. It's not an unpleasant look, but it's not the 'love at second sight' gaze that Clarke is hoping for.  
  
She blows out a frustrated sigh before asking, "Do you want to take a walk? Get out of this stuffy library for a bit?"  
  
"I'm sorry, Clarke, but I have too much to do," Lexa replies quickly. Too quickly? Clarke finds herself second guessing everything. This isn't like her. Though, on second thought, maybe it's just like her at eighteen.  
  
That response isn't surprising, she supposes. "What class is that for?"  
  
"Intro to Politics." She remembers this. This is the class that Lexa talks about. Raves about. This is the class with the professor that makes such a great impression. The professor who takes Lexa under his wing, who talks politics and theory, philosophy and international relations. This is the professor who finds something in Lexa that Clarke thought only she could find.  
  
"How do you like it?" She asks, leaning forward to run her fingers over the books in front of Lexa on the table, a de Tocqueville paperback and a huge textbook, both well-loved, both with yellow "USED" stickers on the spines.  
  
"I'm unsure of it," Lexa says. That should be her answer, but Clarke waits. She knows Lexa has more to say if she gives her the time. Maybe it's her brain translating, maybe it's her guard falling. Whatever it is, Clarke wants in, so she waits. She doesn't have to wait long as Lexa takes a deep breath and continues. "I had hoped we would talk more about the Constitution and the foundations of American government. Things that I will need for law school, for passing the bar. Instead, we're talking about things like polling and political maneuvering and this French guy's thoughts about American government," she says, holding up the paperback and waving it in Clarke's direction. "At our last class, we watched several political advertisements from the last presidential election."  
  
Clarke smiles and she feels Lexa's eyes on her. "What's so bad about that?"  
  
"I never said it was bad, I'm just unsure about it. I don't know how it connects to my training for law school." She huffs. Clarke loves this side of a frustrated Lexa. When she's figuring everything out and occasionally slipping into a heavier accent. It's when that heavier accent and frustration is directly aimed at Clarke that she's not so keen on this Lexa.  
  
"Does everything need to connect?"  
  
"Ideally, yes." That drive. If only it was for what she truly loved. Maybe she doesn't even realize it yet. She probably doesn't.  
  
"What do you do for fun, then?" Clarke says with a smile, knowing the answer. It's: "I didn't have fun in college, at least not at the beginning. All work, stuffed in the library. Calls from dad making sure that's where I was. Making sure I wasn't partying. Like I'd be partying at all." At least that was the answer she remembers Lexa gave at twenty-two, her head heavy in Clarke's lap, Clarke's fingers pushing through her hair and massaging her scalp after her first law school exam.  
  
"I don't leave much time for fun in my schedule, Clarke." Stone-faced.  
  
"You should," Clarke replies, pulling the de Tocqueville book toward her, out of Lexa's reach.  
  
"Did you need a book here?" Lexa asks, pulling the book back from her.  
  
"Can you take a break? Can we catch up?"  
  
She looks up into Clarke's eyes, wide-eyed again, then looks behind her, as though her dad is hiding out in one of the stacks, keeping tabs on her. "I suppose."  
  
"We don't have to."  
  
"No," Lexa replies quickly, hand out to stop Clarke from moving away. "It would be nice, Clarke. How are you?"  
  
Clarke beams. A battle won. Lexa is taking a break. For her. For them. "I'm ok. I think I'm ready for this semester to be over."  
  
Lexa looks surprised. "Are you not enjoying college?"  
  
"I am...I just...," Clarke pauses. There's so much more to it. Being at home with her mom and dad over the past year and a half was like falling into a dream. But then going off to college mixed everything up. It became so much about her, rather than her family, rather than Lexa. "I guess I miss being at home, with my family," she says, before getting lost too deeply in it all.  
  
"Yes. I understand. I miss my mother's cooking especially very much." Clarke's heart flutters at Lexa's odd wording.  
  
"What's the first thing you think you'll do when you go home for break?" Clarke asks. She's heard rumblings of home here and there from Lexa, but she aches to know more. Especially from this young Lexa who seems to rely so much on her family, and them so much on her.  
  
"I am expected to tutor my younger brother when I go home."  
  
Aden. The little hellion. It's Aden who Clarke thinks is to blame for Lexa's hard-nosed persistence and stubbornness. He fucks up and Lexa becomes that much more determined to make her parents proud. Clarke grits her teeth at the thought of him but remembers that this is only eighteen and they've only just met. "Oh, you have a younger brother?" She asks, looking away.  
  
"Yes, Aden. He is fifteen. My parents expect him to become a doctor. Since I excelled at biology and chemistry in high school, they would like me to tutor him in those subjects while I'm home."  
  
"Does he want to become a doctor?" She shouldn't ask. Planting all these little seeds is sure to result in dire consequences, but she can't resist. It's not like the situation at twenty-four can be that much worse, she thinks. But maybe it can. Maybe this is why she's here. To plant these seeds. To change Lexa's life, not her own.  
  
Lexa pauses, as if she hasn't considered it. She shrugs her shoulders.  
  
Enough hard thinking, enough seed planting for today.  
  
"You sound like a good big sister."  
  
"I suppose." Lexa stops for a moment, as if she's never thought about it. Then, "Do you have a big family?"  
  
"No, just me, my mom, and my dad."  
  
"Are you close?"  
  
"As close as can be. Last week, when I visited them, we stayed up until nearly two in the morning playing scrabble. My dad is the reigning champion. He won on a triple word score from the word 'zax.' We challenged him, but it's definitely a word."  
  
"Sounds nice," Lexa says distantly. She looks at Clarke a beat too long, eyes flitting between Clarke's eyes and her own hands idly fumbling with the pages of the paperback. Clarke feels her eyes well up momentarily. It is nice. She hadn't been thinking about it or reflecting on it too much lately with the beginning of school and all, but she's spending so much more time with them than she did before and it's quality time and after exams she'll have a month of quality family time, uninterrupted.  
  
It's just a moment though, of her eyes studying the way that Lexa's long fingers flip at the pages of her paperback. Somehow, in that time, thinking about her family, and Lexa's persistence, and final exams, she's convinced herself that this is not the moment. She and Lexa have perhaps moved their relationship from strained emails to slightly less stunted conversation and Clarke's grateful for that, but this is not the moment to push. This is not the moment to seek out something more. There's too much at stake - Clarke's family, Lexa's studies. She can't.  
  
"Sorry to barge in on your studies, Lexa," she says abruptly, standing up from the table. "I'll see you later."  
  
Lexa stands with her and extends her arm to shake hands. "It was pleasurable, Clarke. I hope I can see you again sometime. Good luck on finding your book."  
  
"My what?" Clarke says, reaching out a little too far and gripping her forearm for an awkward moment. She sees Lexa's eyes study her own and she can't think. It makes her wonder if Lexa feels any little bit of this, too.  
  
"That book you're looking for."  
  
"Oh right, yes, that one." Clarke drops Lexa's arms and turns toward the stacks, then turns back, "I'll email you soon."  
  
"I would like that," Lexa replies, with a single wave of her arm in Clarke's direction.   
  
  
  
Winter break is not quite as gratifying as she'd hoped it would be. While they spend plenty of quality time together - playing scrabble, exchanging Christmas gifts, reading in the living room in the glow of the fireplace - her parents still have work to do. Which leaves Clarke home and alone more often than not over the course of the month. Soon enough, she's thinking too hard and too long about the predictability of her future. No amount of doing or not doing has changed her fate or the fate of anyone else. Then, she thinks too hard and too long about whether she'll ever go back to twenty-four and whether twenty-four is actually twenty-six now that two years have passed. Are they still in that small bedroom in New York? Is she still working too hard at a job she hates? Does Lexa still look at her from across the room with those exhausted green eyes? She could change things once she gets back there. Make her life better. Make Lexa understand. Maybe make her mom understand. Maybe that's why she's here. A period of contemplation. A very long period of contemplation.   
  
  
  
A month in and out of bed, wandering around the house in slippers and her sweatpants have made her excited to leave home. It's the first time she's felt that feeling since twenty-one (the first time around), when she just couldn't stand to be around her mother any more. And, as soon as she thinks about the coming excitement of school - seeing Octavia and Bellamy and Jasper, starting Studio Art II, going to basketball games - she feels guilty. Though she's starting to relent, this second chance still feels like a reason to alter fate and how can she do that when she's so far away from her family?  
  
Second semester goes just about as expected. Friends are fine. Classes are fine. Family is fine. The basketball team is fine. Lexa is fine. Everything is just fine.   
  
It's nearing the end of basketball season when she gets a reply email from Lexa, delayed by several days. It's hard for her to read it, but she can't delete it and she knows that she should have expected it. She knew about her, about Lexa's first. Costia. Lexa's email reads a touch like an awkward romance novel, describing every detail of their first encounter at an event for Eastern European students. (An event Clarke is almost certain she had to get permission from her father to attend, because it sounds an awful lot like extracurricular fun.) Lexa describes Costia's hair and her eyes and the way she twists her hands when she talks and Clarke remembers Lexa's flare for both the romantic and the dramatic. It's a flair that has since run dry, but it was there once, welling and swelling for her. She supposes that she should be honored that Lexa trusts her enough to share this information, but she doesn't linger on that thought too long before wondering what she and Costia are doing at that very moment. Costia's probably whispering in her ear, hugged against her back as Lexa applies her first strokes of eyeliner. Lexa's probably laughing that silent little laugh as Costia wipes an errant smudge from beneath her eye. Costia's probably burying her face in Lexa's neck, inhaling her scent. Lexa's probably turning around, tracing her fingers over Costia's lips, up the bridge of her nose, over her brow, up to her scalp. Lexa had to learn that from somewhere. And Clarke can't help it. She doesn't want to picture her girlfriend with someone else, but she just can't stop herself.   
  
It takes her a few weeks to write back. She's not upset. This is fate. Costia is Lexa's first. Clarke is her next. Or supposed to be. With her own flair for the dramatic, Clarke convinces herself that some change of fate will probably, finally, kick in around then. Just her luck.  
  
It reminds her of all of the firsts and seconds and thirds that she's missing this time around, though. Wells was her prom date, but they didn't round the bases like they did in high school the first time around. He got a peck on the cheek and a 'thank you' and that was it. He was supposed to be her first. They were supposed to hook up on prom night and continue through the summer and even a little into freshman year. The girl on the fourth floor never got too much closer than a smile and a lingering look. They bumped one another in the dining hall and the girl offered to help clean up Clarke's t-shirt and Clarke got so flustered she nearly yelled at the girl. That was supposed to be the start of her second, that moment right there in the dining hall. Just the slightest overlap between her and Wells. (Wells would forgive her a few months later, though Raven would hold it against her for quite a while longer, questioning her character and their friendship.)  
  
Now that Lexa's got Costia (and especially now that Clarke has to hear about it), she misses that connection. With someone. Anyone would do.  
  
She meets him at a frat party.  
  
To say she's wary is a bit of an understatement. He's supposed to be her third. Or, he was her third. Now, if she goes through with it, he'll be her first. (She spends an inordinate amount of time considering this and then the social construct of virginity before clouding her brain with another beer.)  
  
Finn turned out to be a liar and a cheat the first time around, though mostly good in bed as long as he hadn't had too much to drink. She considers that if she knows that he'll be a liar and a cheat, if she expects it, can she just use him up and spit him out this time around, instead of the opposite?  
  
She'd forgotten that he was such a goofy, charming guy.  
  
She'd forgotten that he'd made her feel so beautiful.  
  
She'd forgotten how easy it was to fall for him.  
  
But she doesn't sleep with him. Not after that first night at the frat party. Not after their first date. Or the second. Or third.  
  
Pretty soon, she's got a new set of rules in place. Rules that will keep him from lying and cheating. Rules that keep her from falling into bed with him so easily.   
  
He occupies her time and her mind, for the most part, even convincing her to spend some of her weekends meant for home on campus with him.   
  
It finally happens after another email exchange from Lexa. She's glowing right through her computer screen, going on and on about Costia, about love, about Costia inspiring her to pursue law school in DC, maybe even finishing school in three years instead of four so that they can graduate together.  
  
She deletes that one but only after reading it again and again. Maybe her fate is to allow Lexa and Costia to be together. Maybe Costia would make her happier. Maybe Costia understands her more. Maybe Finn is her person after all.   
  
She deletes the email and calls Finn.   
  
The sex is less remarkable than she remembers. There's not enough foreplay. He finishes too quickly. She can't help but think about the difference between Lexa's lithe body gliding on top of hers and Finn's hulking frame sinking their bodies into the hard dorm-issued mattress.   
  
The next morning, she tells him it was a mistake. He doesn't disagree.   
  
  
  
She spends that summer missing twenty-four more than ever before. College is boring. Her parents work too much. Lexa's in love with someone else.   
  
She'd rather hate her job, miss her broken family, and question her relationship than do this all over again.


	4. Nineteen

NINETEEN

  
Going back to school helps. After spending the summer wallowing, she decides to put some energy into enjoying sophomore year. The first time around, she'd spent her sophomore year exploring her options. She'd taken a bio class and another statistics class and even the Intro to Farsi class. She's not sure what she was trying to accomplish by taking so many different classes. Maybe there was some underlying hope that she'd fall in love with something new. That's got to be what that Farsi class was about.  
  
This time around, she takes full advantage of the art offerings - something she knows she won't tire of. It takes her the summer to realize that at twenty-four, she'd been away from art for nearly three years. Georgetown provides the opportunity to release some of the anger and frustration and loneliness from the summer (and it doesn't hurt that she still gets credits toward graduation.) Another Studio Art class, a Mixed Media class, and an Art History class are added to the docket. No bio, no stats, no Farsi.  
  
She thinks about Lexa now and then. There's still the occasional email. For a while, she didn't respond. Not long after she first heard about Costia. She needed the time to separate the Lexa she knew from this one. The Lexa she knew was in love with her, even if it felt like a fucked up kind of love. This one only knows Costia's love. The Lexa she knew fell hard and fast for Clarke not long after they first met. This one doesn't seem to know what to make of her.  
  
Once she can separate the two, they resume emailing, though it's decidedly less personal than when they left off. Lexa tries, but Clarke doesn't engage in the Costia talk and soon they're just exchanging niceties about classes and internships and plans for the future.  
  
And so it goes. Studio Art II becomes Studio Art III. Mixed Media becomes Printmaking. Art History becomes an Art Education class. She still can't find it in herself to drop the business minor, but she's nearly halfway done so she picks up another class, rounded out with another science requirement (but only because she has to). She's still home more weekends than not. Still calling home more afternoons than not.  
  
"Hi Dad." She's just finished her last class of the day when she calls him. She sits on the stool looking at her most recent painting, half listening, half observing.  
  
"Hi Clarkie." His voice is tinny through the phone.  
  
"Whatcha doing?"  
  
He gives a hoarse laugh, somewhere between a wheeze and a chuckle. "Same as most Monday nights."  
  
"So falling asleep in your chair until it's an appropriate time to go up to bed?" Clarke finds a trace of still-wet green paint staring back at her from the canvas and moves to smudge it.  
  
"I think it's always an appropriate time. It's your mother who disagrees." There's another chuckle on the other end, but this time it's followed by a hacking cough.  
  
She abandons the paint and looks into the distance, one hand instinctually moving to grip at her thigh. "You ok? That didn't sound good."  
  
"Fine. Getting over a cold."  
  
"You should probably get it checked out, whatever it is." Her eyes focus on the same spot against the back wall of the studio, her hand grips at the same spot on her thigh.  
  
"Nothing I haven't had before." It's time. The thought starts as a speck in the distance, but barrels toward her.  
  
When she doesn't respond right away, he continues. "Your mother said I'm fine."  
  
Her mom had to weigh in. It can't be just a cold.  
  
"I'm going to stop by tomorrow after classes," she says, all in one breath, "just to check in."  
  
She hears him let out a quick burst of air, what she hopes is maybe the start of a laugh. "Headed back to work tomorrow, honey."  
  
"Well I guess I'll be there when you get home." Eyes still focused, hand still clenched tight.  
  
"You know I'll never say no to a visit from my favorite, but you shouldn't feel like you have to check in on your old man. I'm fine."  
  
She almost starts then, but holds off for just a moment more.  
  
"I'll see you tomorrow night. I'll make some chicken soup, just to help you finally kick that thing."  
  
The call is long over when she moves the phone from her ear to the table. Her eyes unfocus. Her hand unclenches. She cries harder than she can ever remember - in this life or the last.  
  
  
  
She wants it to feel like there's nothing special about dinner, and in a way, there isn't. She's at home and the soup's been ready for nearly two hours before her parents cross the threshold of the front door. Pretty typical. She'd taken advantage of their long work hours when she was in high school, ignoring her homework until her mom cracked her bedroom door around seven and found Clarke with charcoal on her face and a few sketches on her easel.  
  
It's her dad who comes home first, unsurprisingly. His tie's loose around his neck and his hair's standing up a little bit at the back of his head and the only way she knows it's him is from the hacking cough that announces his arrival.  
  
Her mom's next, about thirty minutes later. She comes in with a gust of cold air and a heavy sigh.  
  
After dinner, her mom comes back downstairs from changing her clothes.  
  
"Dad's gonna take a quick nap. I think it's been a long day for him, honey."  
  
She studies her mom from across the room, looking for any sign that it might be true.  
  
"What if it's something more than a cold, Mom?"  
  
Maybe that look she gets from her mom in return means she's right. Maybe it's just the look of someone who's had a long week.  
  
"It's unlikely, Clarke. It's just that time of year - colds, the flu, even some allergies are still lingering."  
  
Clarke nods. She wishes she could remember when it happened. She wishes she hadn't been so fucking selfish the first time around.  
  
Just as her mom is about to disappear into the kitchen, she whispers, "Do you remember when you promised me?"  
  
"Promised you what?"  
  
"That you'd tell me. If something ever happens."  
  
Her face falls and Clarke swears she knows. "I promise you, Clarke."  
  
"I don't need protecting, Mom."  
  
"I know honey. Nothing's wrong. I promise."  
  
It's close. She knows it has to be close. They didn't tell her until much later the first time around and it had progressed significantly by then. She figures that this must be the start of it and if she can convince him to see a specialist early, or get into one of those trials at the hospital, if he just listens, then that might put an end to it.  
  
But she also knows her mom wouldn't break a promise. She wouldn't lie to her. Even with their relationship as broken as it is at twenty-four, her mom has never lied. Maybe things have changed. Maybe dropping that Farsi class was the key to it all. The thought crosses her mind, but not for long. She can't let herself get too optimistic.   
  
She spends most of the weekends during basketball season at home. It's the same stuff: scrabble, reading near the fireplace, Chinese food and pizza. Despite short bouts of optimism, she knows that it's close and it occupies her mind completely. Knowing that Lexa's off somewhere with Costia allows her mind to dwell on it even more. There's no use in thinking about Lexa now.  
  
On weeknights, she's never too far from her phone and never even close to buzzed. Just in case. It doesn't stop Octavia and Jasper from trying to ply her with alcohol every chance they get, especially with her light load of classes and her absence from all of the best weekend parties. She doesn't care that she's "missing the college experience." She wishes that she could tell them that she actually isn't missing it at all. She already did that once.  
  
It happens on a snowy afternoon in March. She's just finished her last class of the week and her feet are soaked through the boots with ice and slush. Her phone feels warm against her cheek. She just wants to find out if they want her to bring home any cupcakes from the place they like near campus.  
  
"Hi, honey."  
  
She's surprised to hear her mom pick up her dad's phone. She's surprised to hear her mom's voice on a weekday afternoon. She waits a moment, not wanting to betray her emotions. "How are you guys?"  
  
"We're ok." She sounds tired.  
  
"Just ok?" Is this the moment? Is this the moment when they knew and didn't tell her? Did they have this moment the first time around? Probably not. She was busy with Farsi or Finn or some other frivolity.  
  
"Just ok. We've had a long day." Clarke hears the phone muffle and her mother say something. "Your father's sleeping, Clarke. Can he call you tomorrow?"  
  
She's worked herself up again, wondering, reading into her mom's sighs and her dad's sleeping patterns. She wipes a tear away and presses forward. "No. I want to talk to him."  
  
"Clarke," her mom's voice takes on a familiar, frustrated tone. One that she hasn't heard much in this redo, but it's familiar from the first time around.  
  
"I just want to know that he's ok," she whispers, a full sob threatening, cracking her voice.  
  
There's more muffling and she hears her father's low rumble getting closer to the receiver.  
  
"Hi, Clarke. I'm ok, just tired."  
  
He sounds it. More than ever before.  
  
"Are you sure, Daddy?"  
  
"Why don't you come home this weekend?" She can hear her mom say something in the background and her dad cover the receiver to respond.  
  
"We'll have some wonton soup and I'll beat you and Mom at Scrabble."  
  
"Ok, Dad."  
  
  
  
The first time they told her it was in June, after classes had ended and exams were over and she came back from her trip to the beach. This time, they tell her on a snowy weekend in March. They watch Georgetown lose the conference championships and then her mother turns off the television. They both turn to her and the blood rushes through her ears so loudly that she doesn't even know exactly what they say.  
  
She misses a full week of classes after they tell her. She spends most of that time on the couch in her pajamas. It's the week before Spring Break and there aren't any midterms to study for, what with art classes taking up so much of her schedule. Indra calls her and she doesn't answer but she sends an email a few days later about a vague family emergency.  
  
When she gets back to school, every night is occupied by research on the newest hospital studies and their age requirements and phone calls home to check in. Late nights are occasionally scattered with movies she's seen before, just to have something on, even if she's not going to pay attention. She's back - reliving this - for a reason. She convinces Indra to allow her to take work home, so that she can skip Studio time on Friday afternoon and go straight home, usually with a trashbag-covered canvas in tow. She spends her weekends explaining the studies that she's researched and making more chicken soup than she ever thought possible.   
  
In a way, home feels like it always has. Dad falling asleep on the chair. Mom waking her up from the couch with a hand brushing through her hair. Scrabble games. She's torn between staying at home to help (whatever that may mean) and staying in school (because there just seems to be so little that she can actually help with). When she suggests taking the rest of the school year off, her mom gets angrier than she's seen her in a while. She wants to fight back, but she's been down that road before. Her mom will yell, she'll yell, they'll both slam their doors and cry. She heard muffled sobs from her mom's room too often in that past life.  
  
  
  
There's one night, after she's hung up the phone, after she's read about the latest trials and studies, when she just can't stare at her computer any longer.  
  
Her feet carry her there. But that is the only thing of which she is certain. She can't remember pulling on her jacket or walking past the dining hall, nor can she remember swiping her SmarTrip card or riding up the long escalator to the cool night air.   
  
When she feels the warmth of the library, it scares her. How did she get here? What was she thinking?   
  
She's at the same table. The same "Sunday study-bun" even if it is a Tuesday night. What's probably the same pencil moves from pressing against her lips to underline something in the text, and then back to her mouth.  
  
"I'm glad you're a creature of habit."  
  
"Oh, hello Clarke." A heavy gray sweater hangs off her lithe frame, one leg tucked under her body. Her eyes are wide, just like the first time they met in this very place.  
  
"Hi, Lexa." Clarke sits. It's less busy than that one Sunday afternoon, but then she realizes it must be pretty late. Pushing ten.   
  
She sets the pencil down on the table and studies Clarke. She's a little leaner in a year's time. Her jaw line a little more chiseled. She pushes her glasses up, removing the last barrier to her visage. "Hi."  
  
She looks so young and beautiful and good and kind. Clarke wants to hug her. To ask her to hold her, like she remembers doing at twenty-four, when Lexa's almost asleep and mumbling something she can never make out.  
  
That memory turns out to be the wrong one. Tears spring to her eyes and roll down her cheeks in an instant and she buries her face in her hands so that she doesn't have to look any more.   
  
"Clarke, what's...are you alright?"  
  
Clarke can't say anything. Not yet. It'll come out warbly and broken and she's not even sure what she wants to say to her.  
  
There are people watching her. She feels their eyes, wonders what they must be thinking. Lover's quarrel is probably their first guess. Soon enough, that'll be true. Maybe. But not this time around.   
  
"Come on. Let's go sit outside for a moment," Lexa whispers. Clarke finds her suddenly kneeling next to her, a hand on her arm.  
  
Lexa leads her to a bench outside of the library. Their faces are illuminated by a single spotlight that lights up the path between buildings. Her hand has found its way to Clarke's and it feels warm against the cooling April night air. They sit for a while until Clarke can get the tears under control. Until she trusts herself to speak. Still, she's not entirely sure what's about to come out.  
  
Lexa looks at her for several long moments and Clarke feels fresh tears threaten. Those are the same eyes that have been staring back at her during Studio time. The same green that took her so long to mix. She hadn't thought about it, but she should have known her subconscious would creep in to her art.  
  
"I need you, Lexa." She's almost as surprised as Lexa that it comes from her mouth, but she doesn't have much time to think about it when Lexa's forehead scrunches and she raises one eyebrow.  
  
It's taking Lexa a while to respond or even react beyond the furrowed brow and Clarke considers saying more, but she's not sure how she can elaborate. She's already crying outside of a library forty-five minutes from her campus with a girl she's only met a handful of times. The elaboration is sure to be even crazier.  
  
"You need me? I don't understand."  
  
"I need you," she says again, then whispers, "please."  
  
Lexa's hands run through her hair, pulling some wisps from their hold.  "I'm not sure what you mean, Clarke."  
  
"My...it's my Da..." she starts, before whimpering and sealing her lips tight. She wants so desperately to be enveloped by her, wrapped in her, lost in her, buried.  
  
"What is it?"  
  
Lexa slides closer. Clarke can feel the warmth of her body through her jeans, but a few centimeters still divulge the distance between them.   
  
"I just need you, Lexa." She doesn't want to tell her. It has to be her burden. She's done this before. She figured it out then, without Lexa. She just wants some connection for the night. Not something that will change their fate, just something that might make her feel whole. Just for one moment in time.   
  
Lexa's hands wring in her lap when they're not running through her hair. She sighs heavily. "I'm sorry to say this, Clarke, but I don't think we know each other that well."  
  
It hurts, but she's not wrong. Clarke wants so badly to convince her that she loses her restraint and a bit of herself.  
  
"But we will," she starts desperately, grasping at the bench next to Lexa's thigh. "We'll know each other so well. We'll be together. We're going to run into each other in a couple of years. You're going to be interning with Senator Jacobsen and I'm going to be in the Capitol art internship program and we're going to meet and fall in love and you're..." Lexa's brow furrows more and more with each word and she stops herself before the anger that she sees in Lexa's jaw brims to the surface.   
  
"I think you should go home." Lexa uses that voice that Clarke knows is reserved for others, not for her. She's never heard young Lexa use this tone, only the Lexa she knows from the tiny apartment. "Do you need me to call you a cab?"  
  
"No. It's...no. I'm sorry," Clarke whispers through tears. Her elbows dig into her knees on the bench and she covers her face with her hands. "Just give me a minute and I'll get out of your way."  
  
Lexa pushes her glasses back down onto her nose. Her head droops, but her eyes remain on Clarke, hunched over and sobbing next to her. Clarke wonders what she's thinking. Maybe wondering whether she should call the police, rather than a taxi. Maybe wondering how quickly she can delete Clarke's email address from her contacts. Maybe wondering how to avoid that internship with Senator Jacobsen in a few years.  
  
"Why do you need me?"  
  
The sobs stop and several moments pass before Clarke realizes that she's holding her breath. She lifts her head and looks at Lexa, who studies her for each second that passes, eyes tracing Clarke's reddened and puffy eyes, her wavy blonde hair, the flush that's crept up her chest.  
  
"You steady me."  
  
"How?"  
  
"You calm me. You soothe me. I can't describe it, but when you're around, things are ok."  
  
"What do I do?" Her eyes are impossibly green. Clarke can't look away. For some reason, Lexa is indulging her crazy and she doesn't feel so out of control.  
  
"You just...you're just there. You look at me and you smile at me and you hold my hand sometimes, or you wrap your arms around me and pull my head against you. You tell me things are going to be ok. And then they are. They're always ok."  
  
"I do?" Impossibly green, even when hidden beneath the growing furrow of her brow.  
  
"I mean...I don't know why I'm trying to explain this. I should go." She takes one last look. She'll see them again, but it may be another year. At most, it's supposed to be two. For Lexa, she'll hold on to fate.   
  
"I don't understand, Clarke."  
  
"Of course you don't. In a few years you'll understand. Wait until twenty-one. Unless I've fucked everything up. I've probably fucked everything up."  
  
She's almost gone. She's standing and turning and then she hears "Lexa?"  
  
"Hi. Just a minute," Lexa says to the voice. Clarke turns back to look. "This is my friend Clarke, the one I told you about." She doesn't want to be meeting anyone right now, least of all who she thinks she's about to meet.  
  
"Oh, from Mock Trial, right?"  
  
Clarke nods, wiping the tears from her cheeks. "I was just going. Sorry to bother you. Nice to meet you, Costia."  
  
As she's walking home she realizes her mistake. Costia. Lexa didn't even introduce them. Doesn't matter anyway.


	5. Twenty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI: Just posted two chapters in the span of a few minutes. Don't miss Chapter 4.

TWENTY

 

  
She's done it before.  
  
  
She's sure she can do it again.  
  
  
She just doesn't remember how she did it.  
  
  
It's different this time.  
  
  
She's not angry at her mom.  
  
  
Not yet, at least.  
  
  
She's not angry at him.  
  
  
How can she ever be angry at him?  
  
  
(She wasn't really angry at him before either. At least not for long.)  
  
  
She forgets about Lexa.  
  
  
Until, in rare moments, all she can do is remember Lexa.  
  
  
She decides to stop drinking when she stumbles on her way home alone one night.  
  
  
She can't remember how she gets the scar on her shin, except that it happened that night.  
  
  
(It's the same scar she got on the same shin doing the same stupid thing she did the first time around.)  
  
  
She doesn't write.  
  
  
She doesn't call.  
  
  
(Except she calls Finn one night. He's happy to be her mistake. Again.)  
  
  
She shouldn't call.   
  
  
She shouldn't write.  
  
  
It's hard enough just to drag herself to class each day.  
  
  
She nearly drops all of her classes. Her mom won't let her. It's almost a fight. She stops herself just in time.   
  
  
Instead, she just barely passes her marketing class and her paintings go dark and abstract. No more vivid greens. Indra doesn't say much, at least not at first.  
  
  
She sees her mom every weekend. It would be more if her mom would let her, but she won't. When she goes home, they don't talk much. It's still better than nothing at all.  
  
  
She's in the art studio or her room the rest of the time. She's happy to give up what little collegiate social life she's had. Octavia and Jasper and Bellamy seem to understand.  
  
  
Raven comes home more often, too. This is when things changed with Raven, the first time around. They'd recovered from the Wells debacle of freshman year and then her dad dies and her mom disappears and somehow Raven ended up on her mom's side of everything. She felt like she lost her dad and her mom and her best friend all in one fell swoop. So she keeps going home and not talking to her mom but not because she doesn't want to and Raven keeps showing up and giving her this look that makes her feel like she should be doing something. She just doesn't know what.  
  
  
She's decided that she's not losing Raven this time around and she'll do her damnedest not to lose her mom either. She hasn't changed fate yet, but she figures she has to be able to change something. She can't keep living this same life without them. Or she's not losing them without a fight, at least.  
  
  
If she can't change his death, she'll change everything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The deeper the valley, the higher the peak. Sorry for the (temporary, I promise!) sads.


	6. Twenty-One

TWENTY-ONE

 

Twenty-one isn't much easier, but there's a hint of change in the air. They still don't talk much, but she keeps going home each weekend. It's hard. So hard. There's one weekend where she doesn't see her mother at all. She's in their room and the lights are turned off and every hour Clarke tiptoes by and glances in. Her mom didn't even care to shut the door. She wants to yell at her. This is her grief, too. But that's how things went the first time around.  
  
At times, there's a hint of hope. A smile at dinner, or a hand brushing through Clarke's hair to wake her up from a nap. A promise to take her out to dinner in a few weeks to celebrate her internship. Those things didn't happen the first time around.  
  
And there's Raven. The first time around, Raven was firmly on her mom's side. Now that she's had a chance to think about it, to do it all over again, it doesn't surprise her. Her mom was always more of a mom to Raven than Raven's own mom. And when Clarke wouldn't listen, when she'd yell at her and storm out of the house, Raven was there unconditionally. The way that Clarke was supposed to be.  
  
This time around, she doesn't yell and storm, she doesn't fight her mom, or Raven. They're all there. Most weekends. Even if it's just to watch a movie and eat Chinese in silence. Sometimes that's exactly what she needs and she figures that's true for her mom and Raven, too.  
  
That's how the school year goes. More art classes, a few business classes scattered in for good measure. Weekends at home. Long and slow. Clarke's too busy thinking about her mom to think much about Lexa, but she starts creeping back into her thoughts. Just after she closes her eyes, just before she falls asleep.  
  
It isn't until she hears her name from a familiar voice echoing through cavernous halls in the heat of the summer that she remembers her fate. Their fate.  
  
She'd thought maybe she'd altered it for good, back in the days of Mock Trial and the American University study library. Then, at twenty, she'd fallen victim to fate so succinctly with hospital beds and tired, strained eyes. And after, well, she just hadn't thought about it much at all.  
  
  
  
"Clarke?"  
  
They're twenty-one and standing face-to-face in a building in downtown DC and Lexa's green eyes make her forget the question.  
  
They're twenty-one and it appears that Lexa's summoned up the courage to find Clarke for once, this girl who keeps finding her, from New York to DC. But maybe that's because she needs to be found.  
  
"You were right," Lexa says with wide, bright eyes when she gets close. She's wearing a tailored skirt suit with shiny patent leather flats and it reminds Clarke of Mock Trial. That outfit hadn't reminded her of anything the first time around.  
  
"About what?" She thinks she knows, but she's tired of taking the lead. She'd done it from seventeen to nineteen and it was completely fruitless. And then twenty hit and she didn't really care anymore.  
  
"About twenty-one. The Capitol." Their conversation in the library. Or, maybe more accurately, her meltdown. Crying. Outside the library. Costia. She supposes if fate has played its part, Costia should be somewhere in Europe right now and Lexa shouldn't care too much.  
  
"I guess so." She looks away, down to Lexa's patent leather flats. There's a little scuff on the right one. Probably from a second-hand store. But she can't look at her face, into her eyes. It makes her feel like she's losing control.  
  
"I've been thinking," Lexa looks down, like maybe she's going to catch Clarke's eyes, but to no avail, "and I'd like to take you out."  
  
She looks up. Out of control. "Like a date?"  
  
"Yes." Lexa smiles like she knows Clarke's answer. Like she believes in fate, too.  
  
"What about Costia?"  
  
"We broke up."  
  
"When? Why? It seemed like you two were meant to be?"  
  
"Come on, Clarke. First love never lasts."  
  
You'll be my first love, she thinks. It's bittersweet. Are they supposed to last?  
  
"How is this time different from those other times that we've emailed and talked, or that we've run into each other?" There were so many other chances. If it's fate, why didn't it happen sooner? "Why now, Lexa?"  
  
"I've had time to think about you, Clarke. About what I want." Clarke wonders what that means, but she doesn't want her tether to break to free.  
  
"How do you know this is it?" How indeed? At twenty-four, she's not sure that they're meant to be. They'll have some good times, but there's more than a handful of bad times mixed in.  
  
They're twenty-one and this is fate, right? Except it's not. Everything was supposed to change during this second chance. Clarke may be around more and her mom may seem on the verge of something good, but ultimately her mom's still all but absent and her dad's still dead. Nothing's changed.  
  
"I don't know that I can do this," she whispers to the ground. Her eyes feel wide and panicked as they dart from marble tile to tile and she convinces herself not to look at Lexa.  
  
"I thought you said that we were going to meet and fall in love here?"  
  
"I did. We were." This feels like it could be a chance to stop simply replaying everything, to stop the rewind on her life. If she says 'no,' that changes things. She's changed things with her mom. Albeit slowly. But she stopped arguing and fighting back. She forced herself to go home on weekends, to drag her mom downstairs to the dinner table. And that part of her life feels different. It's a relief. But saying 'yes' wouldn't change this part of her life. Still, it's so enticing. She's been missing Lexa. And their first year was downright blissful.  
  
"I've thought so much about what you said Clarke. I saw you on our first day here, at the beginning of the summer, and I knew you were right. You didn't see me, but I saw you from across the cafeteria and I knew. I couldn't even approach you because you made me forget everything I could possibly want to say. I couldn't translate my brain quickly enough."  
  
"You don't know anything Lexa. You don't know anything about me or us. There is no us. Maybe it's better that way."  
  
"Clarke, I..."  
  
She breaks her resolve and looks up at her and Lexa stops. Whether she stops because Clarke won't let up, or she stops because she can't remember what she could possibly want to say, Clarke doesn't know. She can't want to know. This is how it is needs to be this time around.  
  
"I'll wait for you," Lexa whispers.  
  
She laughs at that.  
  
"Lexa. This isn't...it's not some romance novel."  
  
"If it is to be the way you say it is to be, I'll wait."  
  
Clarke can only shake her head. When she turns her back to Lexa, she can't help but smile. She can't see whether Lexa is smiling, too.  
  
  
  
They're twenty-one and Lexa tests a shy smile as she passes Clarke in the hall. She's almost tempted to stop. This can be their moment. And the year that follows can melt away so many of her troubles. She knows it. Instead, the corners of her mouth just barely turn up as she walks a little faster.  
  
She doesn't walk fast enough to miss the new ink on Lexa's arm. It's a geometrical pattern and she remembers asking Lexa about it precisely twice. (Which is one more time than the back tattoo. She should have that one by now, too.) Lexa was close-lipped about it back then, the first time stumbling over a few words about obligation and family history. She'll never forget the second time: "I already told you, Clarke. Just leave it alone." That was when it was starting to feel like it was all over.   
  
Hearing those words from twenty-four echo back through her mind validates her decision to walk past.  
  
  
  
They're twenty-one and some days Lexa summons up the courage to talk to Clarke, to this girl who won't stop looking at her, but maybe that's because she can't stop looking back. Despite her resolve.  
  
The security lines are pure hell some mornings. Clarke usually tries to get there early, but sometimes there are wardrobe and wavy-hair-in-the-humidity emergencies and she shows up just before nine. Somehow, of course, Lexa's heels click up behind hers. She pretends not to notice her, at first, but then she can't not.  
  
Instead, when she turns to Lexa she doesn't even give a hello or a smile, just asks: "Do you like the work that you're doing with the Senator?"  
  
Lexa's startled out of adjusting her button-down and looks up at Clarke without an answer for a few moments. Then says, "Very much."  
  
"Is it getting you ready for law school?" She knows the answer and wants to pry, to torture Lexa a little, to make her question herself and her decisions.  
  
"Not exactly, but I'm trying out that thing you called 'fun.'" Lexa looks down and gives a shy smile to the floor and Clarke regrets her intent. Lexa's not as bold as the first time around, a couple weeks prior. Maybe it's the barely there smile the last time they passed in the hall. Maybe she's given up.  
  
"It's not exactly what others might call fun, Lexa. Normal people like to go out to concerts, have drinks, you know."  
  
They both take a step closer, the metal detectors and security guards in sight. Lexa seems closer than before. "Well. Would you like to have your version of fun with me sometime, Clarke?" Or maybe she's just as bold. Clarke's so caught up in wondering which minute moment of her life is the moment that may alter fate that she can't read Lexa as well as she used to.  
  
"Are you asking me out on a date?"  
  
"Yes. A fun date."  
  
"You already know the answer, Lexa." She's surprised by her perseverance. The first time around, Lexa had her in mere moments. Those eyes and that very slight accent that would only show up with certain vowel-consonant combinations. She wasn't expecting for Lexa to fight so hard after rejection.  
  
Lexa smiles this time, like it's a game. "I thought I'd try."  
  
"A valiant effort."  
  
  
  
They're twenty-one and Clare just won't relent.  
  
"Hello, Clarke." Lexa's standing over her, her white Oxford with just the barest hint of a stain near the collar. Probably another second-hand store find.  
  
She's just sat down with her full tray and a book about the Cox Corridors and she figures she can't really escape this one. "Hi, Lexa."  
  
"Would you mind if I joined you?" Lexa signals to the empty seat across from her.  
  
"If you must," Clarke says, not without the hint of a smile.  
  
A smile that Lexa somehow fails to interpret. "I'm sorry to bother you. I'll sit somewhere else."  
  
"No, no. I'm teasing. That was a bad joke. Please join me." Clarke pushes the seat with her foot from under the table so that Lexa can sit.  
  
"Thank you."  
  
They don't talk for long enough that Clarke gets through a few pages in her book and Lexa finishes half of her sandwich. She's far too interested in her sandwich, her eyes devour it as much as her mouth does.  
  
It feels a little like old times to Clarke, with Lexa preoccupied with her meal and Clarke silently eating beside her. But it's also a feeling that she misses. The only person she's eaten across from for the past several months has been her mom while Raven's busy with her internship in California. There's no excitement in that, no wondering if it's safe to look up and study the other person, no considering carefully where she should rest her feet, no self-consciousness about whether that last bite was too big. She wonders whether Lexa's wearing her down a little. If this is fate after all.  
  
"What's new in the Senator's office?" She asks, after Lexa's finished her sandwich.  
  
She leans back in her chair and Clarke studies the dip of her neck and collarbone beneath the contrast of the white shirt. "Top secret plans to take over the world."  
  
"They share that stuff with the interns?"  
  
"With this intern." Lexa's broken into a full-on grin and Clarke can't help but take it in.  
  
"Seriously, what's new?"  
  
"For the past week, I've been taking calls and sitting in on constituent meetings. New York residents are concerned about this new homeland security bill the Senator's been working on." Lexa's leaning forward now, her eyes bigger and wider.   
  
"How do you like it?"  
  
"It's a rush, frankly. To have to negotiate all of these different demands from so many perspectives. The Senator and his staff are really good at it, so I'm just trying to take notes and keep up with them."  
  
"He sounds like a cool guy. And if he's letting you sit in on constituent meetings with him, it sounds like he's taken a liking to you." Planting seeds.  
  
"He has, actually. His chief of staff asked me if I'd like to stay on through the school year."  
  
"That's amazing, Lex. Congratulations!"  
  
Lexa looks away and nods.  
  
"Please tell me that you're taking it." She doesn't take it. Clarke doesn't know why she keeps doing this, why she keeps suggesting and hoping that things will be different.  
  
"I'm thinking about it."  
  
"Why aren't you jumping at this opportunity, Lex? The Senator's chief of staff himself asked you to stay on. It's clear that he sees something in you. And you seem to love this job so much." She's fallen back in her chair, slouched just a little, eyeing the remains of the crust still on her plate.  
  
"I need to prepare for the LSATs, Clarke. Senior year is for preparation and applications."  
  
"And you think you'll love being a lawyer more than working for the Senator? Law school will always be there."  
  
Lexa shakes her head.  
  
They sit in silence for a while. Clarke can feel Lexa's mind churning, can see the threat of tears in her eyes.  
  
She leans forward, pulls Lexa's eyes up from her plate. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you upset."  
  
Lexa nods. Clarke loves those little head movements, like words can't possibly be a substitute for eye contact and a gesture.  
  
"It might cheer me up if we could hang out after work today."  
  
"Like a date?"  
  
Lexa nods a little too eagerly, like she knows the answer.  
  
"I wish I could, but I have plans." She doesn't have plans and she wants to agree more than she has before, but everything is still happening just the way that it's supposed to and it's not the way that she wants it to at all. She'd rather expend all of her energy denying Lexa now so that she can create a new outcome later. Something has to give, right?  
  
  
  
They're twenty-one when Clarke decides she just can't fight fate any longer.  
  
"Clarke?"  
  
She's standing still in the middle of the Brumidi Corridor in the Senate wing of the building. People rush and bump past her.  
  
She'd done her best to avoid this wing of the Capitol.  
  
Every year, they'd go on a tour.  
  
"We can't live this close to DC and not take advantage of it, Clarke," he'd say.  
  
Her mom would usually be working and so it became their thing. Clarke and her dad, touring the Capitol, looking at the art, hoping to get a glimpse of some high powered Senator or Congressman. He'd liked the Brumidi for its grandeur. Its high, arched ceilings, the portraits and allegories of American history adorning the walls. On each visit, he'd point the same things out to Clarke, the portraits along the walls, the magnificently detailed work near the elevator, the scenes from American history.  
  
She's not sure why, but it's the vine of the songbirds and butterflies winding up the wall that has tears welling in her eyes.  
  
She can't be sure how long she stands there.  
  
It feels like one of those movies where everything else becomes a blur.   
  
  
She's done it before.  
  
  
She's sure she can do it again.  
  
  
She just doesn't remember how she did it.  
  
  
There's a hand on her shoulder and a voice in her ear.  
  
"What's wrong?" the voice asks as the grip tightens on Clarke's shoulders.  
  
"Clarke, please. Come with me." But Clarke's not moving and she's still crying and people still swarm around them.  
  
The blur in front of her clears.  
  
Lexa. Who else?  
  
A few moments later, Lexa dips her head to find Clarke's eyes. Clear. Green. Concerned.  
  
She pulls Clarke's hand into her own and gently squeezes.  
  
She wraps her arms around Clarke and pulls her blonde head of wavy hair to tuck under Lexa's chin.  
  
Lexa does exactly what soothes her.  
  
Clarke's not sure if it's instinct, or if Lexa remembers from that one time in the library two years ago (gosh, has it been that long? is Lexa's memory that good?) when she thought she'd ruined everything.  
  
She decides it doesn't matter. Lexa's waited long enough. They've waited long enough. It's fate and she's so tired of fighting it.   
  
  
  
Their first date isn't actually much of a date. Lexa's coworkers have a standing Friday happy hour and she invites Clarke. She's not sure if Lexa means it as a date, but Clarke plans to turn it into one.  
  
Not after the first drink. That's just to work up the courage. Lexa's coworker Gus has her cornered by the end of the bar and Lexa mouths "Are you ok?" like she can do something about this mountain of a man who may or may not be hitting on Clarke.  
  
After the second drink, she's escaped Gus and Lexa's leg is pressed against hers under a booth they occupy with a few coworkers. They're talking about the bill that they're working on and all of the constituents they've talked to in the last week, including some guy in the Bronx who's absolutely positive that the government is spying on him. But Clarke only catches fleeting moments of the conversation. Her mind mulls over whether she can sneak her hand to rest on Lexa's leg without alerting the rest of the gang. She's pretty sure that if she tried it right now, Lexa would startle and jump and that would end things pretty quickly.  
  
After the third drink, it's just Clarke and Lexa and Clarke's hand on Lexa's thigh, just above her knee and Lexa's eyes lingering on hers for too long. She's not drunk, but she's adventurous.  
  
The fourth drink is a Sprite from the pizza place down the street from her summer dorm. Lexa's got a smudge of grease on her chin, but she looks good in Clarke's shorts and sleep shirt.  
  
The fifth drink is from the water bottle she keeps next to her bed. She's glad that she can't see Lexa, even if she can feel her every move. Her foot tangles between Clarke's feet. Her thigh presses against Clarke's behind. Her breasts push against Clarke's back. Her breath tickles Clarke's neck.  
  
"Thanks for letting me stay the night, Clarke."  
  
Clarke hums a sleepy assent.  
  
"Are you sure you don't want me to sleep over there?" The empty twin bed across the room. There are no summer dorm roommates and that's how Clarke lured Lexa into spending the night. Pizza and Sprite and an empty bed and PJs and an extra toothbrush.  
  
Not long after pizza and Sprite and changing and brushing teeth, Lexa crashed into the bed and Clarke fell into the same one, pulling Lexa's arm over her torso and pushing their bodies together. Lexa didn't say anything, but Clarke could feel the panic. She only pressed their bodies tighter.  
  
"Have you dated anyone before?" She whispers it, but she can tell from the way Lexa's breath quickens that she's still wide awake.  
  
"Yes. For a short time. Costia."  
  
"Before her, I mean." She knows the answer, but she suddenly feels unsure in this second time around. Her own dating history has changed. Maybe so has Lexa's.  
  
Lexa pauses, like maybe she should be embarrassed, and whispers. "She was my first."  
  
"I see."  
  
"Have you?"  
  
"Not really. Sort of." She's not sure about how to answer. She has. But not in this second chance at young adulthood. She had that short time with Finn, but nothing much happened this time around. She lets it hang. Lexa inhales quickly and holds it. Then exhales. She does it again and again until she's sure Lexa's going to say something else. But she doesn't.  
  
  
  
When they wake in the morning, Clarke sneaks out from Lexa's arms and to the bathroom. They still haven't kissed yet, but she brushes her teeth in anticipation.

"Where'd you go?" Lexa mumbles. Half of her face is pressed into the pillow that they shared, as her eyes slowly blink awake.  
  
"Just to the bathroom." She tucks herself back into bed, pushing a few stray hairs off of Lexa's face. "You're kinda pretty in the morning."  
  
Lexa buries her face fully into the pillow this time and Clarke can barely make out her response. "'Kinda pretty?'" she says incredulously, as she grabs at Clarke and pulls her closer.  
  
Clarke's hands pull at her cheeks so that they're facing again. "Ok, ok. You're beautiful."  
  
Lexa's eyes dance from Clarke's to her lips and back. And then her eyes are closed and her nose brushes Clarke's gently and her lips press slowly and their mouths part and Lexa pulls back suddenly.  
  
"Shit. I need to...we just..." she sits up quickly and Clarke follows, hand over Lexa's, eyes racing.  
  
"What?"  
  
"I need to brush my teeth. I'm so sorry."  
  
"Oh my gosh, really?" Lexa was like this at twenty-four. Clarke always felt a little frisky in the mornings. Something about waking up in the natural sunlight, Lexa's eyes glowing and looking at her like it was the beginning of something, her muscles pliant and droopy from sleep. Clarke would run her hands over Lexa's arms, push a leg between Lexa's legs, they'd give each other shy smiles like they just met, and just when Clarke leaned forward to kiss her, Lexa would turn her head away and complain about brushing her teeth.  
  
She pulls Lexa in and refuses to let her loose. If she wanted to, Lexa could easily break free, but she squirms and laughs and Clarke buries her face in Lexa's neck.  
  
"You can't..." Lexa says between shivers and giggles, "my neck is too sensitive, Clarke."

She knows. Oh, she knows.  
  
She pushes her nose into Lexa's neck again, just to feel her shiver and shake and laugh.  
  
  
  
They spend the weekend together and go on real dates and Clarke knows it's all in the name of propriety, despite the fact that Lexa continues to sleep in her tiny twin bed.  
  
The more time she spends with her, the more Clarke yearns to tear propriety away. She wants the part where they aren't shy any more, where she can undress in front of Lexa without needing to be sexy. She wants the part where they fuck each other all Sunday morning, like they can't be sated. She wants the part where Lexa is ok with kissing her even though she hasn't brushed her teeth yet.   
  
It nearly happens one night. Lexa's snuggled up behind her and her fingers play at the hem of Clarke's sleep shirt until she can't take the suspense any more. She settles on top of Lexa, legs bracketing Lexa's thighs, hips pushing into her, hands moments away from pulling off the shirt herself.

They're face to face, breathing in the same air. Lexa fights to keep her eyes open, as if looking for a cue from Clarke. Clarke's been looking to her this whole time.  
  
She remembers this desire. All layers of it. This desire to please and be pleased. This desire to want and be wanted. This desire to love and be loved. She sees it in Lexa, too. Did she still see this at twenty-four? She can't remember any more.  
  
It's a fraction too long. She looks for all of the layers mirrored back to her on Lexa's face and she finds them and Clarke fights to keep the tears at bay.  
  
"Sorry, I just...I..."

 

Lexa pulls her hands away from Clarke's thighs and brings one to wipe a tear from her cheek.  
  
She doesn't say anything.  
  
Clarke's done this before. Lexa's more likely to stop an intense makeout session to brush her teeth. Clarke's more likely to stop everything with tears.  
  
Her eyes flit from Clarke's eyes to a space on the wall behind Clarke and she knows it's not supposed to go like this.  
  
"Are you ok?" She whispers, finally, using her thumb to wipe another tear away.  
  
Clarke can only nod. Lexa stops and Clarke heaves a coarse, heavy sob. Lexa pulls her head against her chest and Clarke's sobs fill the room.  
  
Gradually she moves her legs back and tucks her head in deeper, until they're so tangled together that their bodies are near indistinguishable. Breaths even out until they find the same rhythm.  
  
"Ok?" Lexa muffles into her scalp.   
  
Clarke nods against her neck, unwilling to meet her eyes. “I’m sorry."  
  
"I know that there's some...'baggage' I guess is a word some people use. You don't have to tell me what it is, but if you want to..." Lexa trails off, eyebrows knitted and finger tracing the spot at the nape of Clarke's neck where her hairline ends.  
  
Up until this point, there have been two separate boxes for the two great moments in her life: her dad and Lexa. She can't bring them together. She shakes her head and Lexa pulls her closer.  
  
  
  
Finally, late that night (or maybe it's early the next morning) propriety fades for good.  
  
Lexa's pressed against her so tight, one thigh nestled between her legs. Just enough for her to rock her hips up and catch some friction. She runs her hands from Lexa's biceps, taut and glistening with their sweat, supporting her upper body, down to the plane of her back, catching in the divots of her lower back. Slowly she moves to grip Lexa's ass. She'd always been sensitive back there. There was one time Clarke trailed her hands over Lexa's skin there and Lexa was so surprised that she jolted her knee into Clarke's center. That night ended with a bag of frozen peas tucked down her sweats, but with plenty of laughs later and a few tears in the moment. With the right touch, she knows that it'll spur Lexa's hips into deeper strokes. She grabs and clenches and Lexa offers a whining huff in her ear.  
  
"What are you doing?" Shy, twenty-one year-old Lexa. Before twenty-one, there had only been Costia and sweet, slow, innocence.  
  
"Closer."  
  
"I can't." Clarke releases and squeezes again, bending her knees and digging her heels into the mattress to rock her pelvis higher. Lexa sounds like she can't catch her breath, gasping wetly right next to Clarke's ear. Clarke pushes with her hands. "I can't get any closer."  
  
"I want you to come, Lex. On top of me."  
  
Lexa pauses, pushes up on her arms, digs her palms into the mattress. She looks down at Clarke, wide eyes and mouth agape, lips swollen and wet. It takes her another minute, and then she whispers hoarsely, "Can you even do that...like this?"  
  
Clarke wants to laugh, but she remembers how sensitive Lexa is, in this first year. There was that one time when she relegated Lexa to tears the first time around, when she joked that if Lexa kept teasing she would just take care of it herself. Clarke remembers that she can't joke and needs to be very careful. But she also wants what she wants.  
  
"Are you close?" she whispers back, looking up at Lexa, running her hands from Lexa's shoulders to her wrists and back.  
  
Lexa takes too long to think about it.  
  
"It sounds like you're close. The way you're breathing. You're so wet." This is not twenty-one year-old Clarke. She's corrupting young Lexa in the best way. She knows this is one of Lexa's favorite positions. It took them almost a year to get to this point before. It was so sweet and vanilla until they went away on their only vacation after graduation and a few tequilas later, Clarke watched as Lexa finally unwound. She can't wait that long this time.  
  
Lexa nods and drops her head to Clarke's shoulder. That does it. She sheds some of that self-consciousness and molds her body to Clarke, reaches long, lithe arms to grip at Clarke's thigh and behind, pulling up to meet her push.  
  
The cheap dorm bed squeaks and that seems to spur her on more. The headboard knocks against the cement walls. No one lives next door, as far as Clarke knows. If someone does, she can't think about it too much now. Her leg starts to cramp just at Lexa picks up pace. Squeaks and a faint grunt and the headboard against cement and a whine. Lexa's sweat and hers. Fingers digging into her. Her fingers digging. Holding her breath. A desperate wine. Minute, steady rocking. The quick thump, thump, thump of the headboard, barely moving, barely knocking the wall now.  
  
Lexa comes spectacularly. A gasping, hoarse whine. Sweaty, tense muscles. Wide green eyes popping open, glancing at Clarke for one final moment before ecstasy. Clarke could come just from that image. Lexa falls heavily on top of her, breath evening out, eyelids drooping.  
  
She strokes Lexa's cheek, then hair and digs her fingers deep into the sweaty nape of her neck. She wants to whisper, "I love you," but she knows it's too soon.  
  
  
  
There's a moment not long after they're both sated for the second time around. It's vaguely reminiscent of their first time at twenty-one, but something feels off.  
  
Clarke hovers over Lexa, both bodies wrapped up in thin cotton sheets, her fingers tracing Lexa's bicep. A shaft from the street light outside illuminates their faces.  
  
"Tell me about this."  
  
Lexa doesn't move, but she feels Clarke's fingers against her skin. "Not much to say."  
  
Clarke lets it be. If she wants to share, she will. She needs the space and time.  
  
"Family. Four of us. We're separate, but each the same - see the patterns inside? Without one, the rest don't make sense."  
  
Clarke hasn't heard this explanation before. Or if she did, it didn't sit with her the way that it's sitting with her now. She traces her fingers over each, wondering which one is meant to be Lexa, which one Aden, which ones her parents. Whether it's supposed to work that way.  
  
She wonders what her own tattoo of family might look like. What it would look like without one. Whether it would make sense.  
  
"It's beautiful." A sob threatens, but she wills it back.  
  
They were never like this before, these marks on Lexa's body. They were sexy and provocative. They led to late nights and whispers of what's to come.  
  
But they've become something different here. A connection. An understanding.  
  
"I'm without one, Lexa." She's not really sure how else to put it, but she figures that it must make sense to Lexa.  
  
"I know, Clarke." There are tears in her eyes, too.  
  
"I feel like nothing makes sense."

"Let's just let things not make sense for a while."  
  
It makes more sense than any thought she's had in years.   
  
She heaves a sigh of relief against Lexa's neck and falls asleep.

 


	7. Twenty-Two

TWENTY-TWO

 

 

It's been six years of this. This weird second chance. If that's what it is.  
  
At times, it feels like a second life completely, rather than a redo.  
  
There's overlap. Sure. Huge overlap. Her dad. Couldn't change anything there. Her mom pulling away. Same. But then, her mom isn't exactly like last time. The first time. Whatever. There's Lexa. So, more overlap. But then, there's young Lexa. High school Lexa. That's not overlap. It hurts her head to think about it.  
  
Is this a second chance at life or just a second life? Is this reliving what's already been fated, with a few minor blips, or is this a new fate taking shape?  
  
At twenty-two (at  _this_  twenty-two), she can only hope for a new fate to take shape. (Is "new fate" really even  _fate_  at all? Again, it hurts her head to think about it.)  
  
She's twenty-two and Lexa's hand tightens on her hip and her warm breath tickles the back of Clark's neck and it feels a little like old fate and a little like something new.  
  
"You 'wake?" she mumbles.  
  
"Sorry," Clarke whispers back.  
  
Lexa's hand clenches at her thigh and Clarke moves to roll over, to brush the hair from Lexa's face and coax her eyes open. It's not their first time with this late-night routine. Lexa's hands usually find Clarke in the middle of the night to wake her out of a bad dream, to soothe her and calm her and hold her tight, to remind her that it's just a bad dream, even if what Clarke's dreaming about is actually just real life, just the past, just him.  
  
"What's wrong?" her slight accent is a little more noticeable when she's barely on this side of sleep. Her eye lashes flutter for a moment, but then  she catches Clarke's eyes and holds.  
  
"Just thinking too hard. Go back to sleep, babe." Clarke leans forward and presses her lips to a warm forehead, resting there.  
  
"Tell me." Lexa's breath puffs hot and sticky into Clarke's neck. She can tell that Lexa's eyes have fluttered closed again, even if she can't see them.  
  
"It's hard to explain," she starts, then stops. She thinks she's off the hook until a few moments later, when she feels Lexa's fingers pinch at her hip. "Do you think about fate ever? Do you believe in it?"  
  
"Thinking too hard," Lexa sighs. Clarke laughs. Full-bodied and a little out of control. It fits, what with all that's going through her mind.  
  
"Sorry. I told you to go back to sleep."  
  
Lexa's breath feels soft and even against her.  
  
Again, she thinks she's off the hook.  
  
A few moments later, her sleepy, slightly accented voice again: "I love you. Does that help?"  
  
Lexa pulls back, eyes blinking awake, finding Clarke's.  
  
She wonders how much Lexa knows. Does she know what Clarke's thinking? Does she know that Clarke knows they won't last? If a twenty-four year-old Clarke can wake up in sixteen year-old Clarke's body, then maybe Lexa can read minds. Maybe Lexa knows their fate. Maybe Lexa's trying to change their fate, too. Starting with these reminders. These I-love-yous.  
  
"Help with what, babe?"  
  
Her eyes start to blink slowly closed again "With your fate?" she mumbles. Somehow Clarke feels more safe with Lexa on the edge of sleep once more.  
  
"Oh, Lexa. I'm not sure that it does. I love you, too. Go back to sleep. I'll make you breakfast in the morning before you catch the train."  
  
  
  
  
She thinks maybe this is just a second chance, and not a second life completely in situations like this. Not long ago, she was twenty-two for the first time and they were still wrapped up in one another in Clarke's bed just off campus. They were still keeping clothes in each other's drawers and sneaking notes into each other's notebooks. Clarke was still watching Lexa leave to catch the Metro for her 9 AM and Clarke was still cramming books into her bag and running out the door minutes before class started.  
  
"I love my American breakfast." There's a sausage falling off her fork and the yolk of her eggs spreads across the plate. There may even be a bit of egg yolk at the corner of her mouth.  
  
Just months ago, Lexa was wide-eyed and open-mouthed when Clarke cooked her this "American breakfast" for the first time the morning after an especially wild Friday happy hour. Except then, it was just "breakfast." Just a whispered promise after a late summer night. ( _"Stay. I'll cook you breakfast."_ ) She ragged on Clarke for it, at first. This huge plate with eggs and sausage and hash browns and toast and ketchup. ( _"Ketchup? No. For what? On eggs?!"_ ) But then she mixed the yolk with the toast and a dab of ketchup and she didn't look back up from her plate. Clarke watched her the entire time, chin resting in her palm, leaned again the table, taking a sip of black coffee every now and then, wearing Lexa's wrinkled Oxford she'd found smushed into the floor.  
  
Now, it's part of the routine. Two or three times a week Lexa spends the night. Two or three times a week Lexa gets an "American breakfast."  
  
"Gotta keep you well fed with all of those classes and studying you've got today. Plus, I know that you're not going to pack anything for lunch."  
  
Clarke's routine is mostly the same, too. Chin in palm, still waking up, sips of black coffee every now and then, usually Lexa's old Oxford, with the hole near the sleeve. It's sort of not even really Lexa's any more.  
  
She looks up, a mound of hashbrowns piled on her fork. "There was an apple in my bag yesterday," she says, proud.  
  
"I wonder who put it there?" Clarke replies with a wink.  
  
"Oh." Her smile is full-blown and it gives Clarke pause. "Thanks."  
  
"How is studying going?"  
  
Lexa takes a few moments to shovel more food. "It's fine," she says, mouth still full.  
  
"Lex." The coffee cup hits the table a little harder than intended and Lexa stops chewing.  
  
"I don't...it's just..."  
  
"What?"  
  
"I don't want to start something," she mumbles, pushing food around with her fork.  
  
"I'm not," Clark replies, a little too quickly, a little too loudly. "I just want to know."  
  
"You're not going to ask me if I'm happy? If I'm sure about all this?" Lexa looks up at her, meeting her eyes for a moment, then back down again.  
  
"No. Promise." Still, a little too much.  
  
"Studying is ok. It's a lot on top of everything else, but I took a practice test yesterday and raised my score by 5 points from last time."  
  
"Is that a lot?"  
  
"It's a good start. Columbia's in the 170-175ish range, Georgetown's in the 165-170 range. I've got a little bit more to go still."  
  
"There are a lot of good law schools out there if you don't make it into that range, babe."  
  
"Yeah." Lexa's standing. The plate's under the faucet. Clarke's still at the table, leaning back, contemplating the last few sips of now lukewarm coffee.  
  
And that's it. She's heard the end of this conversation quite a few times. At this twenty-two and back at that twenty-two.  
  
  
  
  
Sometimes, on those couple nights a week when she's spending the night in Lexa's little single room on campus, Lexa steps out into the hallway and Clarke can only hear the soft melody of whispered Ukrainian. Sometimes Lexa returns minutes later, jaw set and eyes distant. Those times, Clarke leaves her alone, waiting for Lexa to talk to her first. Sometimes Lexa returns more than an hour later, jaw trembling and eyes red. Those times, Clarke pulls her into a hug and whispers affirmation over and over again. They never talk about it. She can never figure out the right time, the right words to say, especially when just a few words about the LSAT or law school or her parents will set Lexa off anyway.  
  
They never talk about it about it until they talk about it. Lexa's jaw is tight, clenched, her eyes alight on Clarke when she quietly closes the door to the hallway. Clarke's tucked into the corner on the bed, hand idling over her traveling sketchbook. Usually, Clarke gives her a quick look, just to figure out which Lexa she's getting - the jaw set and eyes distant or jaw trembling and eyes reddened. Usually, Lexa doesn't look at her at all.  
  
"I know you want what's best for me," she whispers through clenched teeth. Clarke can just barely hear it. "I know you want me to be happy."  
  
She sits on the edge of the bed. She looks tired, Clarke thinks. Different. Those wide, bright eyes, the full-blown grins from this summer at the Capitol - they're not completely gone, but they've all but faded from her memory.  
  
Clarke sets her book to the side and sits up behind Lexa, her chin on Lexa's shoulder, hand tangling into her fingers.  
  
"I do, babe," she whispers into Lexa's neck, resting her forehead against that tight jaw, feeling it loosen and her body lean back into Clarke's.  
  
"I need you to try to understand." Her head turns into Clarke's and she can feel Lexa's breath against her. "For me, Clarke, this is not about my happiness."  
  
That line is so familiar. It feels like fate and she feels like fighting it.  
  
She sits back against the wall, sighs loudly. "Your life is not about your happiness?" Her voice is probably a little too loud, but she can't help it. "Your future isn't about your happiness? This is what's so fucking crazy to me, Lexa."  
  
She sees Lexa lean forward, hands pushing up into messy curls. They're always unkempt after a phone call in the hallway. She imagines that Lexa sits there and pulls at strands of her hair, twirling and pulling and twirling until they're all out of order.  
  
"My life and my future do not just belong to me." It's parroted. This is a line Lexa's heard and delivered herself time and time again.  
  
"They do." There's some desperation in her voice, but it's tinged with resignation. "Lexa, they do."  
  
She stares up at the ceiling and wonders if she can live like this all over again, wonders if they had these moments of unhappiness back in their first twenty-two. That feels like so long ago. It was.

"My life, my future, they belong to my family."  
  
"No." She sits up and pushes her body into Lexa from behind, wraps her up tight in her arms.  
  
"Yes," Lexa says quietly, still leaning forward, hands still pushing against her forehead and into her hair. Clarke is just holding on. "This is the way it is. I can't explain any better and I guess I can't expect you to understand, but I need you to accept it."  
  
She figures that neither one of them get much sleep that night. Her place between the wall and Lexa is stifling and she wakes up a few times gasping for air. When she does, Lexa's concerned eyes are on her immediately, like she's been awake the entire time.  
  
  
  
Accepting it is a bit easier when Clarke sees the relief and joy on Lexa's face when she gets an early afternoon email from Columbia's Law School. It makes her forget about Lexa's late nights poring over test prep books. It makes her forget about Lexa's late nights on the phone in the hallway, the tears and the angry whispers. It makes her forget about the couple of times when Lexa shut down weeks before the official test, when she wouldn't return Clarke's phone calls or texts. It makes her forget, but not for long. This isn't the first time this has happened, after all.

  
  
  
Sometimes, she's convinced that this actually is a second chance at life completely. During her first twenty-two, she'd never spent more than a few minutes with Lexa's family. In this life, in this twenty-two, they spend an entire day together. She figures that's got to be a pivotal moment.

It's graduation and it's another one of those moments that gives her relief, that makes her forget about one Lexa in favor of another.  
  
Lexa's all nerves and energy, standing in front of the mirror, adjusting the collar from one of her summer internship outfits. Clarke tried to take her shopping, but Lexa always begged off. She didn't push too hard, this outfit is her favorite, anyway. She turns Lexa toward her and gives her the once over, smoothing her gray pencil skirt, tugging on her thin black belt, pushing the sleek button-down more fully into its tuck. Lexa's got another one of those full-blown grins when Clarke reaches her collar.  
  
"What?" She knows the answer to that, but it feels so good to hear Lexa say it.  
  
"I'm happy."  
  
"Yeah?" Clarke leans in and kisses a cheek that won't seem to relax from its smile.  
  
"Absolutely. Graduation. Summer with you. A few hours in the Senator's office each week. My life can't get any better right now."  
  
"Really?"  
  
"Yes, Clarke. I love you so much. Thank you."

 

  
A few hours later, after Lexa's last "American breakfast" as a college senior, some of that relief dissipates into anxiety. Clarke can't tell if it's that nervous-excited anxiety or that nervous-terrified anxiety. It's nervous-terrified anxiety for her.  
  
In this life, she's only met him once, and never her. In that life, she met him briefly here and there, never her. And him, only for a few minutes at a time. That's all she could stand of him. She couldn't do more time, not with the way Lexa would feel after talking to him, being around him.  
  
But she wants to tempt fate this time. She wants to challenge it and break it down and tear out a new life. For herself. For Lexa. For them.  
  
And this, this meeting the family, getting to know the family, this has got to be a way to tempt fate, she thinks.  
  
Clarke's most nervous about the fact that she's only going to get a quick introduction before she has to spend two hours with them by herself.  
  
They meet at the Quad, not far from the arena. Lexa's hand is sweating in her palm, not least because it's nearing 80 degrees out. They're already waiting as they approach.  
  
He's wearing those faded, slightly wrinkled khakis that Clarke figures must be the same as when she first saw him at the mock trial tournament in New York. He's on the phone. A flip phone. Clarke didn't even realize people still had flip phones. He's talking in an angry whisper that she figured must be reserved for Lexa alone. It's got to be Aden. She's been hearing his name a lot more in those hallway conversations lately. Or maybe she's just been hearing his name a lot more because it's just about the only thing she can discern from their conversations.

She's a more frail, shorter Lexa. In twenty-five years. And with an old lady's sense of style. Clarke's immediately convinced that she's all of Lexa's hard edges. Until she sees her eyes. She's had the rare occasion to be on the other end of Lexa's glare. And that's what she sees from Lexa's mother now, still a hard edge. But she also knows that Lexa's glare is just a few shades off from Lexa's glow. And she's seen Lexa's eyes go from one to the other in an instant because of her. She sees Lexa's eyes in her and it gives her hope.  
  
"Mama, Tato, this is Clarke. Clarke, this is my mother and father."  
  
Her father closes his phone and nods. Her mother extends her hand. She's wearing white gloves.  
  
"Hi, nice to meet you," Clarke says to her, grasping her limp hand. Lexa's mother nods in response.  
  
"Clarke." His accent is much thicker than anything she's ever heard out of Lexa, even at her drunkest or sleepiest. It seems most pronounced when fumbling over her name. "Is that a boy's name?"  
  
"Tato," Lexa says quickly.  
  
It's nothing she hasn't heard before, but it's been a while. Maybe since grade school.  
  
"I suppose it could be," she replies with a nervous smile.  
  
Lexa leans into him and whispers something she can't hear. Not that she would know what she's saying anyway.  
  
While she's leaning close, Lexa's mother fusses over her cap and gown, the tassel flopping awkwardly into her face. Her father doesn't say anything, but when his eyes land on Lexa as she steps back, she stands up straighter, squares her jaw, looks to him. He nods his head minutely. Clarke's seen that move before. This family speaks in nods and angry whispers, she thinks. Lexa seems to relax, just barely, knowing that she has his approval, even if only for the moment.  
  
And then Lexa's gone. Lost in some indistinct line of gowns and mortarboards and tassels and Clarke's alone with them. Lexa's father just starts walking and she and Lexa's mom shuffle behind trying to keep up.  
  
Being in the arena isn't so bad. There's a lot to take in. It keeps her busy for the first fifteen minutes or so. Looking around, wondering who all of these people are, where they came from, who their kids are, whether they've met Lexa, wondering which Lexa they know.  
  
Lexa's mom sits next to her, gloves off now and hands neatly folded in her lap.  
  
"Mrs. Ivanenko, I love your purse," Clarke says, leaning into her. "The colors are beautiful."  
  
She nods and gives Clarke a shy smile. Clarke catches her eyes for a moment before they look away. That glare is gone. Jaw relaxed. She's Lexa.  
  
Lexa's father leans across her from the other side. "What did you say to her?"  
  
There's a moment of sheer terror. She did something wrong and now his angry whisper is going to turn to her.  
  
"Um. Just that I love the purse," she stammers. "The colors. They're very nice. Vibrant."  
  
Lexa's father turns and whispers something to her mother.  
  
"She says 'thank you.'"  
  
She didn't realize.  
  
  
  
She doesn't say another word to them until they meet back up with Lexa after the ceremony.  
  
She's taken off the cheap gown, tossed it over her arm. She's got that full-blown grin and Clarke's so, so glad to see her again.  
  
Lexa's father rifles through his pants pocket as she approaches.  
  
Her calls something that sounds like her name. Clarke can't quite make it out, but he's not saying Lexa. Maybe a nickname. Maybe 'Lexa' is the nickname, she thinks.   
  
"...come, come, come," he says loudly, as she gets closer and closer. He's pulled an old disposable camera from his pocket.  
  
"Clarke. You will take a picture of us. Our graduate."  
  
Lexa's got that full-blown grin and now he does, too. She's her mother's eyes and his smile.  
  
It disappears when she holds the camera up. Suddenly they're all serious again. Her father on her left, face unreadable. Mother on her right, jaw squared, eyes glaring. Lexa in the middle, perfectly positioned to be a mix of them both.   
  
"Take one more, Clarke. I want to make sure we get a good one."  
  
After one more, she approaches. Lexa's talking to her father in English this time.  
  
"Tato, Clarke is studying art. I'm sure the pictures she took are just fine."  
  
She doesn't really have enough time to wonder why Lexa's telling him about her art before he's talking to her.  
  
"You are an artist, Clarke?" His face is still completely unreadable.  
  
"I try to be," she replies, demure enough to play it either way.  
  
"It is not a lucrative career." He says. It doesn't really sound like an accusation, more just a statement of fact.  
  
"Tato." Another quick scold from Lexa.  
  
"No, not often."  
  
"How will you be supporting yourself? Do you expect Lexa to care after you?" Now this sounds more like an accusation.  
  
"No sir," she replies, before Lexa can scold.  
  
"Tato."  
  
"No sir, I'm hoping to sell my art, to get commissions."  
  
"I see."

 

  
A few minutes later and they've said their goodbyes. They'll see each other that night. A graduation dinner is planned for a local Ukrainian restaurant. Some people Lexa's parents know through a friend of a friend. They leave to check into their hotel on the other side of town. Clarke and Lexa stroll back to Lexa's room on campus one last time.

 

The walk isn’t long. Fifteen minutes maybe. They’ve got to go back to Lexa’s to start packing up so that she can be out by tomorrow.

 

But Clarke’s mind won’t relent. She replays their introduction, the interaction inside the arena, taking the pictures. Something feels awful about it all.  
  
"I think your father hates me,” she finally says, several minutes into the walk.

  
"No." It’s a familiar tone. Tired, annoyed, angry.

  
"Well he doesn't think highly of me."

  
"No. He just...he's not used to someone like you." She thinks that a part of this tone comes from loyalty, from protecting them.

  
"What does that mean?"

  
"Look at us, my family. That's all he knows is family. He's not used to someone like you."

  
"Someone who's not family?"

  
"Yes."

  
"Did Costia ever meet them?" She tries a new angle. Just to see if it’s just her, or if it’s everyone they meet.

  
"No."

  
"Oh.”

 

They walk on in silence for a bit longer. Clarke thinking, probably too hard. She just wants to figure it out. The right angle.

  
"Is it a good thing or a bad thing that he's not used to someone like me?"

  
"I...I don't really know."

  
"What if it's a bad thing?"

  
"What do you mean?"

  
"What if he ends up not liking me?"

  
"Well I like you." It's not the answer she wants to hear. She wants to hear, 'I'm sure he'll like you, Clarke.'

  
And now she doesn’t care about the right angle. She can’t stand him and what he’s done to Lexa, what he’ll do to her, what he’ll do to them. "I can think of a few other things you like that he doesn't."

  
Lexa sighs, like she knows what’s coming, but she asks anyway, "Like what?"

  
"Like a career working for the Senator, something in politics."

  
"Clarke."

  
"You gave that idea up because you knew he wouldn't like it."

  
"I'm interning with him this summer." It’s true. Clarke had convinced her to get back in touch with the Senator’s office, to figure out if she could do a few hours here and there each week before she’d have to head up to New York.

 

"A couple hours a week. As a last hurrah, Lexa. You've already said that yourself. You never even gave it a second thought, probably never even asked them to reconsider it." That’s also true. She’d told her parents that she’d finish up the summer in her little dorm room, studying for her new classes, reading up on law books in the library. They don’t even know about this last work she’s doing for the Senator.  

  
She’s unhinged a little as she continues. She just can’t help it. If this is a chance to alter fate, she doesn’t see another way to do it except to fight and fight and fight. It’s fighting for her. "Is that what's going to happen to me, too? Find out he doesn't like me and I'm gone, just like that? And you won't even talk about it, won't even consider it."

 

She’s about to continue but Lexa interrupts.

  
"Hey!" The tired and annoyed drop out of Lexa’s voice and all that’s left is angry. It startles Clarke and she doesn’t finish her tirade.  
  
She stomps ahead for a few minutes. Soon, they'll be back at Lexa's room. Soon, they’ll be packing up her stuff and acting like nothing happened.

 

She stops, sits down on a bench. It's hot, but she's angry and she can't think straight.  
  
It was a mistake. Meeting her parents. She should have said she wasn't ready. How could she possibly think that she'd come to like him after spending the morning with him? And Lexa’s mom? Even if she liked Clarke, she probably wouldn't be able to say it.  
  
Lexa just stands behind the bench in the shade.  
  
"I don't think I can do dinner tonight, Lexa." She’s not angry any more, but she can’t pretend like she doesn’t know where all of this is going. She can’t play into fate, at least not today.

  
"Why?"

  
She starts to cry. Lexa sits on the bench next to her.

  
"It's just. I'm having a really hard time."

  
"What? With Tato and Mama?"

  
She nods.

  
"Clarke. I'm sorry. They just need some time."

  
"He looked so proud of you, Lex. And then, he turns to me, and I'm the camera girl. And then I'm the idiot girlfriend who majored in art. And then, I'm the girl who's going to fucking mooch off of your success."

 

Lexa doesn’t talk to her for several minutes. When she does, it’s the return of that tone. Tired, annoyed, angry.

  
"He doesn't think that."

  
"Then why did he ask me? He said, 'Do you expect Lexa to support you?'"

  
"He didn't say that."

  
"He did."

  
Lexa just shakes her head.

  
"I'm sorry that you're having a hard time with them."

  
"Me too."

  
"I wish I knew what to do."

  
"Me too."

  
"I love you, Clarke." Tired, annoyed, angry.

  
"I wonder if that's enough."

  
"I guess now I do, too."

 

  
  
It's the first night in weeks that they spend apart. Instead, she takes the train home. She watches an old movie with her mom, something from his collection. And for the first time, she thinks that maybe this is just fate come early. Instead of being on the verge of break-up at twenty-four, they're on the verge of break-up at twenty-two.  
  
It serves as a great reminder, though. A reminder to change, to pursue, to be an agent. It serves as a reminder that she isn't idle in all of this. That night she emails a few art studio shares, bookmarks a few calls for portfolio submissions, and reconnects with her high school art teacher, Mr. Coolidge. She's supposed to spend the summer just doing work in Indra's studio, spending as much time as possible in her cozy off-campus apartment with Lexa, making Lexa more "American breakfasts." It's supposed to be a lazy summer before she decides whether to follow Lexa up to New York. She's not sure where any of that stands after all this.  
  
Sleep is fitful, but she's grateful to wake to her mom brushing fingers against her scalp. She's fallen asleep in his chair, just like he used to do.  
  
"Honey, your phone's been buzzing non-stop." She’s wearing that old robe and the morning sun brightly gleams off the polished wooden floors of the family room.  
  
"It's probably Lexa," she sighs and closes her eyes again.

 

Her mom disappears and she starts to fall back asleep. There’s something about his chair.

 

A few moments later, she reappears with two cups of coffee in her hand.  
  
"Everything ok between you two?" She asks as she perches on the arm of the chair.  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"What happened?" She runs her fingers through Clarke’s hair again, scratching lightly at her scalp. Her mom told her once that Clarke used to ask for her to do it as a kid. She’s liked it ever since.  
  
"It's always happening. It's not just this one-time thing."  
  
"Well what's always happening, then?"  
  
"You don't want to hear it, mom. It's just stupid stuff."  
  
"It's not stupid and I want to hear it. Tell me, Clarke."  
  
"She's unhappy. And when I try to point that out, we just fight."  
"Why is she unhappy?"  
  
"Law school, stuff with her parents. It's complicated. I just want her to be happy."  
  
"Maybe it's going to take her some time to figure all of that out. Your father," Clarke perks up. They don't talk about him. They watch his movies and sit in his chair and eat his favorite food, but they don't talk about him. Not at this twenty-two and not at that twenty-two, either. "Your father and I went through the same thing. Gosh, you're so much like him."  
  
"What happened?"  
  
"I had a tough time in my first year of residency. He thought it was because I didn't actually want to be a doctor, I thought it was because of my placement." She smiles and Clarke’s a little bit in awe. Her mom is talking about her dad. And she’s not crying. And she’s not locked in her room. She’s talking about her dad and she’s smiling.  
  
"Which one was it?"  
  
"Well, we were both a little bit right, I guess."  
  
"You didn't want to be a doctor?"  
  
"I hadn't really thought about it much before. I'd talked about it since I was a little kid, but once I got older, I never really stopped to question whether it was something I actually wanted to do. I just assumed it was what I wanted to do because it was always what I said I wanted to do."  
  
"Do you like being a doctor now?"  
  
"I do. It's a job, so there's times I hate it and times I love it."  
  
"I don't think that's the same with Lexa. She doesn't want to be a lawyer. It's what her family wants her to do."  
  
"Why do they want her to do that?"  
  
She’s actually not quite sure she knows the answer to that question.

 

She forges ahead anyway. "Money. Prestige. Because it will bring the family pride, I guess. She doesn't really explain it all the way to me. She just tells me that I wouldn't understand. And that they've given up a lot for her to pursue this."  
  
"Is that what Lexa wants for her family?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"Her life is different from ours, Clarke." She thinks back on to her mom's birthday this past winter, when Clarke dragged Lexa out to the suburbs for lunch with her mother. After lunch, she fell asleep in front of the television and found Lexa and her mom engaged in deep conversation when she woke up. Maybe her mom got something out of Lexa that she never could.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Happiness means different things to different people."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Hey, just keep an open mind." Her mom pushes the phone across the table, closer to her. "She loves you. Your happiness matters to her, too."  
  
"Yeah."

 

  
She doesn't check her phone right away. Instead, she takes a shower, finds some shorts and a tee-shirt buried in her drawer, eats lunch, flips through her old sketchbook. It's not until her mom calls her downstairs and tells her to call Lexa now that she finally checks it.  
  
Lexa's supposed to be packed up and moved out by the end of the day. She was supposed to help. Lexa's first voicemail reminds her about that.  
  
_"Uh hi, I'm about to leave here and wanted to make sure you're not coming over. It's ok, it's not that much stuff, so you don't have to. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't going to miss you if you decided to come over."_  
  
The second reveals that Lexa's probably feeling pretty guilty, since she's still not mad at Clarke.  
  
_"Hi Clarke. Just wanted to let you know that your neighbor let me into the building. A bunch of my stuff is outside your door. I tried knocking a few times, but I don't think you're in there. Just, uh, give me a call back when you get this. I have another run to do."  
_  
The third makes her feel guilty.  
_  
"Hi. All my stuff is in your hall now. Just let me know when you think you might be home. I'm gonna go hang out at the coffee shop."_

 

She can’t talk to her. Not yet. She doesn’t want to apologize and she knows that Lexa won’t. So she texts to meet at the coffee shop.

 

When she gets there, it’s just a few ‘you oks’ and ‘where did you gos,’ before they walk silently back to Clarke’s place to haul Lexa’s stuff into her room and get her settled. It's not much, but it's two Metro trips worth of boxes and bags of clothes.

 

Lexa seems mostly done with her moving when Clarke leaves her to turn on the TV in the living room. She sees Lexa unfolding and folding clothes that she’s already placed in the couple of drawers she cleared out for her when she decides that she’s done helping.

 

She hears Lexa’s footsteps and sees her leaning in the doorway between her bedroom and the living room. She’s just looking for a few moments. Clarke pretends not to notice. She’s not sure whether Lexa’s looking at her or at the TV. Either way, she’s not ready to say something first.

  
"It doesn't matter if he likes you or not.” Her voice is a little shaky and it makes Clarke whip around to look at her. “You know that, right? I love you and that's all I need."

 

She studies her. This isn’t the Lexa from before. Not tired, not annoyed, not angry. Resigned, maybe. Seeking forgiveness, maybe. She’s not sure.

 

Still, she can’t push away those memories from the day before. She can’t push away those memories of their first life together.

  
"Are you sure?" She defaults back fighting fate. It’s the only way she knows.

  
"Will you stop second guessing me?" Lexa’s stoicism relents. Her voice wobbles and cracks and raises.

  
"I guess I just can't help it, Lex,” she says, as she rises from the couch, moving toward the doorway, toward Lexa. “This whole law school business, that I know you're hating, is just proof to me that you're willing to forsake your own happiness, your own life, for your family."

  
"My career and my love life are not the same. He doesn't have a say in you and me. In us."

  
Clarke slides her hands up to Lexa’s shoulders, then up to cup her cheeks. "Then why does he have a say in your career?"

  
"I'm doing this for him,” she says, voice still shaky, placing her hands over top of Clarke’s. “For them. Do you know what they've sacrificed? What they've given me? I have to. I have to. Please, Clarke. I don't want to fight. I love you and I want to be with you. Please."

 

She can’t stand it, so she lets up. She knows she could keep going, but she can’t stand seeing Lexa like this. It’s one thing to fight against her when Lexa’s showing those hard edges. Her mother’s hard edges. Clarke can fight and fight and fight and maybe make some headway against fate.

 

It’s another thing to push up against this Lexa. Anxious and teary and self-conscious. Begging and pleading for Clarke’s trust. Warring between her and them.

 

She knows she could say more, but she doesn’t. She’d rather make up anyway.

 

  
  
Clarke has always found it cheesy, but after talks like these, Lexa likes to call it 'making love.' She nuzzles into Clarke's neck and whispers in her ear. Her hands find their way beneath that tattered Oxford sleep shirt. Clarke can't resist. She doesn't want to resist. After talks like these, this is exactly what she needs. Lexa's got a certain way she likes to recover from these fights. Those intense, wide, green eyes refuse to leave Clarke's. Her hands are gentle, fingers pressing delicately inside. They start so gently that Clarke thinks she's halfway between a dream and waking. She reads Clarke completely. When she gasps for a breath, Lexa does, too. When she lifts her hips to meet Lexa's hand, Lexa pushes her hips closer, tighter. When Clarke closes her eyes and tips her head back, Lexa is there, too.  
  
And then the next morning, after talks like these, Clarke likes to fuck it out. It's not cheesy at all, and, unlike Lexa, she's never actually used those words. She's always the first one awake mornings after fights, like Lexa's been emotionally and physically depleted. She doesn't let Lexa brush her teeth. Her naked body presses Lexa's into the mattress to wake her up. Lexa doesn't resist. She's never resisted Clarke. Clarke prefers to recover with bruising bites, rough hands, and the headboard knocking against the wall. There's no gentle start. She pushes into Lexa, still wet from the night before. She shakes and moans against Lexa's thigh. When Lexa gasps for a breath, Clarke pushes harder, grinds deeper, gasps for a breath, too. When Lexa flips them, sucks a bruise into Clarke's nipple, Clarke pushes back, grabs Lexa's hand, brings it to her center. When Clarke barrels over the edge, Lexa does, too.

  
  
  
They didn't do this in her first twenty-two. At least not that she remembers, and she think she'd remember this. She’d definitely remember.  
  
There's more evidence that she's in the middle of a second life, that fate has taken major turns, but it's always tempered with a reminder that fate's close at hand.

The summer is a second life. Clarke spends long hours in Indra’s studio and comes home each night worn down, with paint splotches across her skin and hair. Lexa seems to actually look forward to law school in the fall. (She thinks it has something to do with the Senator, a Columbia Law School alum.)

But the late summer and early fall are a reminder that fate’s close at hand. They’re in New York, just like last time. Lexa’s headed to law school, just like last time. She’s questioning her decisions, their fate, just like last time.  
  
Ever since graduation day, though, Clarke’s kept one thing on her mind: she isn’t idle in all of this. She needs to change, to pursue, to be an agent.

 

Which is how they find themselves in the middle of a fancy Manhattan restaurant the night after Lexa’s first day of law school orientation. She wants Lexa to continue this excitement about law school. She wants to give Lexa some positive associations.  
  
"How can you afford this place?" Lexa looks at her from over top of the menu. She’s wearing the new suit that Clarke’s mom gave her as a graduation present.

  
She bites her lip between her teeth to keep from her own full-blown grin. "I did a little saving."

  
"From what? You didn't work this summer."

  
"What do you think I did at the studio?" They haven’t talked about it much, but Clarke thinks Lexa’s perception of her ‘work’ may have a lot to do with how much she loves it. She figures Lexa thinks that it’s not work if she loves it.

  
"Uh."

  
"All those paintings - what do you think happens to them?"

  
"Did you...and not tell me?" She puts the menu down and stares across the table at Clarke, eyes wide, mouth agape.

  
"Yep. To one of Indra's regulars. It wasn't much, but it's a start."

  
"It was enough to afford this." She looks around and Clarke’s eyes follow. The dark paneling of the walls, the candlelight, the menu prices that start at twenty dollars and only go way up.

  
"And then some, babe."

  
"Really?"

  
"I've reserved some studio space for the next few months. Not far from our place."

  
"Really?"

  
"Yes. Are you shocked?"

  
"No,” Lexa reaches across the table and grabs her hand. “I'm so happy for you."

  
She's right on the edge of saying it. Saying something like, "That's what I want to feel for you, too. I want to be happy because you're flourishing in your career, because you've found something to love." She wants to say it. This is the perfect time to prove that point. But then she remembers why she made reservations for this place, why she saved up that money, why she begged Lexa to go out on their first big city date.

  
"I'm happy for you, too, babe. Day 1 down. You're going to do great." She raises her glass of red wine. It takes a moment for Lexa to raise hers. She's still processing this new Clarke. And it is a new Clarke. She didn't do this in her first twenty-two.

"To us."

  
"To us."


	8. Twenty-Three

TWENTY-THREE

 

It's not the same apartment, but it's pretty close. The first one was in Harlem. Without her project manager job, they can't afford that one. This one's in the Bronx. It takes Lexa even longer to get to classes. It's even further from Lexa's parents. So, the good with the bad.  
  
  
  
_There's more good._  
  
  
  
"I want to take you out tonight," she says, tossing her shoulder bag on the bed.  
  
"Really?" Clarke knows they haven't been out on a date in at least a month. Lexa probably has no idea.  
  
"Yes. To celebrate." She swoops in behind her, pushing her nose into Clarke's neck. Clarke can feel her smiling.  
  
"What are we celebrating?" She asks, nudging Lexa away from her ticklish neck.  
  
"A 4.0."  
  
"Really?" She may not like law school, but Lexa sure does love good grades and Clarke's happy to celebrate. Anything to make Lexa believe that she's happy. Anything to push those positive associations.  
  
"Yep. To Veselka! Get anything you want tonight, babe. Varenyky, bigos, goulash. One of everything!" At the mention of the restaurant, Clarke erupts into a fit of giggles against Lexa's chest.  
  
"Living large at the Ukrainian diner tonight?" She asks, before collapsing into giggles once again.  
  
One of everything is too much, so she gets one of everything that she knows she likes, just to tease Lexa. With the vodka coursing through them, neither seems to care about the bill or about their responsibilities come morning.  
  
  
  
"How about we go out tonight?" It's after another one of their dry spells. Clarke can't remember the last time they went out. Or, really, the last time she spent more than five minutes in a room with Lexa without seeing her study or hearing her talk about law school.  
  
"Can't. Too much studying."  
  
She's still optimistic, still working on those positive associations, so she says tries another angle. "How about when you're done, we do that thing you like?"  
  
It takes a minute for Lexa to react. Clarke can see each moment of her process: understand Clarke's request, realize the deeper meaning of Clarke's request, figure out exactly what she wants. But once she's settled on it, Lexa's books slide off her lap and crash to the floor. "The one with the lace and the…my face in your...you know?"  
  
She's laughing for three reasons. First, Lexa's complete ignorance of the books crashing to the floor. These books have been her most prized possessions since the school year started. Second, Lexa's face. It's frozen in shock, or awe, or anticipation, or maybe all three. And third, what Lexa's decided is 'that thing she likes.' For as long as they've been together, in this life and the last, Lexa can never find the right words talk about sex and it alternately makes Clarke crazy and makes her fall more and more in love with her.  
  
"It's a vagina, Lexa. And I was actually thinking about the one with me on top of you?"  
  
If the books could fall to the floor again, they would. Lexa's squirming in her seat and staring at the low cut of Clarke's shirt and if she waited a second longer, Clarke swears she would see drool drop from her lip. "I don't think I'm going to be able to study until we figure out which one I like more."  
  
  
  
"Can you hold me?" It's been happening more and more often that Lexa sleeps through her nightmares. The first few times it happened, she figured it was just the late nights studying. She'd just roll over and go back to sleep pretty easily. And she still figures that it's the late nights studying, but now she can't help but pull Lexa awake, even if only for an instant.  
  
"Hmm," she whispers, turning into Clarke and throwing and arm around her stomach, a leg over her thigh. It's not exactly what Clarke had in mind, but it'll do. She just wants to feel her warmth and her weight.  
  
"I love you, Lexa."  
  
"...love...too," she mumbles back.  
  
  
  
Lexa's about a fifty-fifty studier. Fifty percent of the time at the library, fifty percent of the time at the apartment. After a rash of armed robberies in the neighborhood, Clarke won't let her study at the library after dark, which means that by the time she gets home from her afterschool job, Lexa's usually thoroughly entrenched at the desk.  
  
"Rough day?" Usually it's just a quick 'hello' and 'hope your day was good' before she's back to burying herself in her books and Clarke's off to kitchenette to heat up some dinner. But today her eyes are bright and her smile is one of those rare full-blown ones and she can't stop looking at Clarke.  
  
"Yeah. Paint everywhere. The principal was not happy." Clarke's happy to ham it up. She struggles to hold back her smile. She wants to play along.  
  
"You're amazing."  
  
"Why? Cause I can survive being a human canvas for several kindergarten Jackson Pollocks?"  
  
"Just cause. Because you're amazing." She thinks that maybe she should come home like this more often because Lexa has abandoned her books and her desk and is opening her arms and beckoning Clarke to sit on her lap.  
  
  
  
"You gonna let me see that?" It's a typical night in bed. Lexa's light beams against the gloss of one of her books. Highlighter and ink from her pen splash against the pages. Clarke uses the residual light to sketch.  
  
She looks up from her work to find Lexa's eyes on the page, then pulls it back suddenly, like it's a game. "When I'm done, maybe."  
  
"It's me, isn't it?" She's reaching for it, a devilish twinkle in her eye. The highlighters slide from the crease of the book and get lost in the wrinkles of the sheets.  
  
Clarke pulls her lip between her teeth to keep from smiling. "It might be."  
  
"You keep looking at me."  
  
"Well maybe that's just because you're beautiful."  
  
"True."  
  
"Ass. Maybe it's actually because you've got something on your face." She picks a spot on her face and stares, just to find out how gullible Lexa is.  
  
Bingo. Her hands search her face, feeling out for abnormalities, as she asks "What?"  
  
When Clarke smiles, she lets loose one of those full-bodied smiles.  
  
Clarke tilts the sketchbook toward the light. "Have a look."

 

It’s quiet for a moment, just the sound of the bus passing down the street.   
  
"Wow. You're so talented, babe. I wish I could buy all your stuff." There's not an ounce of hyperbole or dishonesty in her words and Clarke feels her lower lip quiver for the briefest of moments.  
  
"I think you'll be able to in a few years." Positive associations.  
  
"I don't want to think about that." Maybe this positive association attempt doesn't work.  
  
"Well you will."  
  
"I guess. I wish I had just the tiniest bit of talent beyond studying and memorizing things." Or maybe this positive association attempt just backfires.  
  
"Oh you've got some talents." A little innuendo is usually successful with Lexa, and the change in her face reveals that it works like a charm.  
  
"I do? Like what?"  
  
She takes the book from Lexa's lap and stacks her own sketchbook on top of it on the nightstand. "Your fingers and tongue are quite talented, babe," she whispers, suddenly demure.  
  
Lexa leans in behind her before she can turn back from the nightstand, her breath tickling Clarke's ear. "Yeah? And what else?" she whispers back, like it's a secret, like there's a million other people in the room, but her words are only meant for Clarke.   
  
"You've got a pretty talented butt, too."  
  
She feels Lexa's laugh, warm and deep, against her. "What talent does my butt have?"  
  
"It wiggles and shakes pretty good," she says, turning back into Lexa to watch her laugh. "And it's excellent for gripping," she adds, reaching to demonstrate.  
  
Lexa yelps in faux surprise. Her eyes are bright and wide and Clarke wants to remember this look for her sketch later. "We should test all of these talents out. I don't believe you."  
  
"But you have to study and I have to finish my sketch." She wants Lexa’s idea to win out. She wants to get some validation about where she falls in Lexa's priorities.  
  
Lexa leans down to run her lips along the column of Clarke's throat. "You know once I get something in my head I can't get it out."

 

Validation.

 

  
  
_But the bad is everywhere._  
  
  
  
"I'm at the grocery store. You need anything?" It's late and she's feeling inspired after a particularly productive night at the studio, inspired enough to fill the shelves, despite not having groceries for the past several weeks.  
  
She can hear Lexa whispering something to herself as she talks. Probably reading. "Breakfast stuff," she finally states.

 

She's at the library. She can hear it in the silence in the background, in the way that Lexa whispers. And she'd be angry if it would actually help. Lexa knows she doesn't want her there after dark. But they've had too many conversations about it at this point. Clarke can't do it anymore.  
  
"Do you want me to pick you up some cereal?" she asks as she pushes the cart down the aisle.  
  
Lexa quickly responds, "When's the last time I ate cereal for breakfast, Clarke?"  
  
She can't help her reaction. "A simple 'no thanks' is enough, Lexa."  
  
When she plays the conversation over again in her head that night, she thinks she gets it. She was studying. She was in the middle of something. She was just being brusque. And Clarke was just thinking too hard, or not thinking at all. She thinks she's got to figure out which one it is so that she doesn't snap like that again.   


  
  
"Can you sketch at the desk?" She leans against her nightstand to flick off the light. Her eyes droop and there's a smudge of highlighter tinting her high cheekbone.  
  
"But I'm comfortable here." It's almost a whine. But it can't be. She knows she doesn't whine.  
  
Her eyes are closed and her head falls forward when she replies, "I have to wake up at 5:30."  
  
"So do I." It's a good thing her eyes are closed with the look Clarke gives her.  
  
She goes to the desk 30 minutes later, but Clarke hates that Lexa can't just put on the sleep mask she bought her at the beginning of the year, when they figured out just how small their apartment is. She hates that they even have to have the conversation.  
  
  
  
They've had a good week. Early nights, dinner together, bed at the same time.  
  
And Clarke's had a good week, in particular. A padded paycheck from some extra work with her "little Jackson Pollocks," as Lexa's taken to calling them, plus an appointment with a potential buyer scheduled for the next day. She's had a good week.  
  
"What do you want to do for dinner?" It's just the natural continuation of a good week. Early night. Dinner together. Bed at the same time.  
  
She's whispering to herself again and Clarke knocks off the first one. Lexa's at the library. No early night.  
  
"Mama brought some stuff up to the library," she states. It sounds like she's reading off a cue card. Clarke can picture her at her study carrel. Highlighter in hand (and maybe a little smudged on that high cheekbone), phone propped between her shoulder and chin, eyes scanning the page, pausing to listen to the phone, scanning the page again.  
  
She already knows the answer, but she's still hoping for the rest of the good week: Dinner together, Bed at the same time. She can stay up late tonight. "So are you coming home soon?"  
  
Scanning the page. "No." Scanning the page again.  
  
"I don't want you walking home from the subway when it's this late, Lex."  
  
"It's ok, I'll probably spend the night here," she replies like she hasn't heard Clarke argue with her about this a thousand times. "Lots to do."  
  
Clarke doesn't eat dinner. Early night. Bed.  
  
  
  
"Remember you said you wanted to see that movie? It's playing around the corner at 10:30." It's been another few weeks or so since the last time they went out. Clarke figures she'll say no. She's spent the last two nights in the library and finals are coming up soon. At least she thinks they are.  
  
"I can't tonight." She doesn't sound like she's in the library, but Clarke can't tell this time. She's coming home from a meeting with a client. Her first regular.  
  
"It's Friday night." She figured she'd say no, but she thought that ‘Friday night’ would maybe give her the push she needed.  
  
"Tato asked me to check in on Aden. He's hasn't been home in a few nights."  
  
Aden again. She can hear the sadness in Lexa's voice now, but she's already hung up.  
  
  
  
"Do you want to go out to Brighton Beach for the evening? Mama invited us to dinner." Clarke dreads the thought immediately, but she can't let on so easily.  
  
"I don't know," she says, and it's good that Lexa's calling her with the way her face is betraying her emotions.  
  
"Is it about them? They like you, I promise they do." She figures Lexa must not be at the library because she doesn't sound like she's talking to Clarke in between highlighting and reading.  
  
"I don't believe that for a second," it comes out a little harsher than she intends. She wants it to sound like a joke, but now her tone joins her face in betraying her.  
  
"You haven't spent more than thirty minutes around them since my graduation last year."  
  
"I can just tell."  
  
"Well how are they supposed to get to know you and like you if you won't spend any time with them?"  
  
"Wait. You just said he likes me." Sometimes she wishes she had a recorder on these conversations. She could swear that's what Lexa said, and if he likes her then why does he need to spend more time getting to like her?  
  
"They do."  
  
"He doesn't like me, Lexa." The truth comes out. For the hundredth time, she figures. Like everything else, this is nothing new. It dates back to her graduation.  
  
"Whatever. I'm done with this argument. I'm going out there for dinner tonight."  
  
"Fine. I guess I'll see you tonight."  
  
"I'll probably spend the night." That's new.  
  
"Fine, I'll see you tomorrow morning then."  
  
  
  
Each fight seems miniscule unto itself. Added together, they knock her flat.  
  
It's not even halfway through Lexa's second semester when she feels buried completely. She waits it out. She chugged through two years of this the first time around. She's sure it's going to get better.  
  
  
  
"You don't understand."  
  
The fight started on the phone. Lexa was happy to let it end on the phone, too, but Clarke told her that she needed to come home. Something about the way she said it had Lexa coming through the apartment door ninety minutes later.  
  
"Help me. Make me understand. Because you're right, I don't understand and I'm absolutely miserable."  
  
"That makes two of us."  
  
"So do something about it. Stop it."  
  
It's the same fight as usual. Each one starts a little differently. This one started with Lexa telling Clarke that her parents wanted to invite them both out to Brighton Beach for dinner, Clarke in particular. It was a ruse, she figured, like usual, to get her to like Lexa's family when they clearly hated her. She said as much. She couldn't help herself. Lexa argued back, which was not as typical. And maybe that's what set her off. Lexa argued back and she laid into her. Everything came out. It started small. The stuff with the late nights at the library. The stuff about date nights. The stuff about studying. Then it got bigger. The stuff about her parents. Then it took a turn into the fight she'd tried to repress. The stuff about whether Lexa was really happy.  
  
And it all led to this.  
  
Lexa, in tears, in front of her. Face red, fists clenched at her side.  
  
"I can save them," it's just a whisper at first. "You know that, right? You know what it's like, Clarke. I took you out to Brighton Beach when we first moved here. I showed you my whole life." It ends with a crumpled face and a crack in her voice.  
  
She doesn't just hate seeing her cry. She cannot deal with seeing her cry. As soon as the tears well in her eyes, Clarke can feel it, too. When the tears stream down her cheeks, Clarke's fall to the floor, too.  
  
"My dad," she sucks in a few breaths in a row and pushes through the tears, breath heaving and a little out of control, "all he does is work. The time you met him at graduation, that was his first day off in as long as I can remember. My mom doesn't speak any English. She's stuck. If Aden was still in school, maybe I could do something different, try something else. But I can't because now I'm supposed to save him, too."  
  
She can't listen to her any more. It hurts too much to see her like this, to hear her like this. "You can't be everything to everyone." She says it too quickly and knows it won't help as soon as she says it.  
  
"They didn't come to America for me to do that to them. Twenty years ago they left their family and their friends and took a grueling trip over here. I was three years old. Mama was pregnant with Aden. Can you imagine traveling away from everything you've ever known for that three year-old and that unborn child? Traveling away from your language, your career, your home? And here, they work and work and work. And when you think they've stopped working, they're still working. It's all for us. For me and Aden. This is what I'm supposed to do with my life, Clarke. I'm supposed to repay them for all of those sacrifices, for wanting something better for us."  
  
"I don't understand why you can't help them and still pursue something that you love?"  
  
"I've already come this far. I'm so, so close. I've taken out the loans. I've just got two more years. And I've got straight A's so far. I'm at the top of my class. If I keep going this way, I'm guaranteed my pick of associate jobs at the top firms. Six figures easy."  
  
"And miserable just the same." She steps toward her. She wants to reach out to wipe her tears from her cheeks, but she's never done this before. They've never done this before. Not in this life and not in the last. She holds her hands by her side and says in a whisper, "What do you think is going to happen once you've graduated? Are you suddenly going to fall in love with this stuff?"  
  
Lexa looks past her. It feels like everything's frozen and she can't tell how long it lasts. But when she looks back up at her, Lexa's sitting on the edge of their bed, head buried in her hands, fingers pulling at tangles of her hair.  
  
"I love you, Lexa."  
  
"I love you too, Clarke," she muffles into her hands. "So much."  
  
"I can't."  
  
This moment burns quickly. Too quick. Lexa's eyes are on her. They're wide and panicked. "Can't what?  
  
"I can't keep doing this."  
  
It's an out-of-body experience and for the briefest of instants she wonders if somehow she's about to experience a third life. She wonder if she's played this life wrongly enough to be forced into a redo of it yet again.  
  
"Please, don't do this to me."  
  
"It's for both of us. We need this."  
  
"No," Lexa's fists push her off the bed and ball at her side. "Don't tell me what I need," she says through clenched teeth. Then, a moment later, she's back on the bed, face buried in her hands, whispering, "How am I supposed to do this without you?"  
  
"I'm gonna go stay with my friend in Jersey tonight."  
  
"No, Clarke...please..." her voice trails off into sobs.  
  
She kisses Lexa on the forehead and leaves. She makes it to the alley behind the apartment before she doubles over and throws up. Her friend answers phone on the second ring and drives more than an hour to pick her up from where she's still slumped over in the alley.  
  
  
  
She calls her mom from Jersey the next day.   
  
"I broke up with her."  
  
"What?"  
  
"I broke up..."  
  
"I heard. I just can't believe it, Clarke."  
  
"Really, you can't believe it mom? I told you, last year. That awful fight we had on her graduation day? Her awful, awful parents. I hate them so much. What they've done to her. What she lets them do to her."  
  
"Is it definitely over?"  
  
"I think so."  
  
"Oh Clarke."  
  
"I'm miserable, mom. I hate coming back to our apartment, I dread talking to her. All I want to do is lock myself in the studio and never come out."  
  
"Come home, honey. For the weekend, at least. I have off."  
  
"Ok."  
  
  
  
Being home doesn't make things any better. At times, it actually feels worse, because this isn't supposed to be home. Home is supposed to be New York. Home is supposed to be Lexa.   
  
They don't talk about it until the morning after her first night home. She doesn't sleep much, but wakes to the smell of bacon and pancakes in the late morning. Not sleeping much turned into a dead sleep somewhere in the early morning.  
  
"She's miserable. Which then makes me miserable," she says between sips of black coffee. "And it's so much worse than last year. All she does is study and go to class. But she won't give it up. And it's like her parents are puppet-masters. They're forcing her through it and she's just letting them move her strings."  
  
Her mom takes a moment to consider everything. "What does she want?"   
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"Well if she doesn't want to be in law school, what does she want?"   
  
"She really seemed to love working for the Senator. She had that internship the summer that we started dating, and she worked a little bit for him this past summer. She seems to love that work."   
  
"You think she wants to do that?" The questions drive her crazy. She just wants her mom to tell her that everything's going to be ok.   
  
"I think she wants to please her parents. When we broke up, she talked about how much they sacrificed and still sacrifice to give her opportunities."  
  
"I can understand her perspective. It's not something that you or I have ever had to deal with, but that's the story for many children of immigrants, you know."  
  
"But how are they sacrificing to give her opportunities if she's locked into something she hates? I wouldn't call that an opportunity at all."  
  
"She wants to please her parents."  
  
"Yeah. And she's miserable doing it. I can't stand to be miserable alongside her."  
  
Her mom actually smiles and it drives her a little bit more crazy. "So like your father. Always wanting to fix everything. Sometimes, baby, there are things we can't fix."  
  
She hasn't cried since the alley, since that night, but it comes back with more force now. "What am I supposed to do?" she asks between gasping breaths and sobs. "I've invested so much into this relationship. Years." She almost lets it slip, but she doesn't say exactly how many years. Twenty-one to twenty-four the first time around, and seventeen to twenty-three this time. Nine years in all.  
  
"I know baby." Her mom circles around the kitchen island, pulling her head against her chest and running her fingers against her scalp. "But you can't fix this. If you want her, maybe she's got to fix it herself."

 

"She won't."  
  
"She fights for you more than you know."  
  
It's the second time her mom's said something about Lexa that makes her think back to that birthday, where she woke up to her mom and Lexa deeply involved in conversation. It makes her wonder how she knows Lexa so well. Is it because she knows people like Lexa? Is it because of the similarities between her relationship with Lexa and her mom's relationship with her dad? Or maybe it's because she's in on this second-time-around thing too? Maybe it's nothing at all. Maybe it's just something she's saying to make Clarke feel better.  
  
"Well I can't fight for her anymore."  
  
"Don't. Take a break. If it's meant to be, she'll fix things herself and find a way back."  
  
  
  
Maybe this is the way it was supposed to be all along. Maybe she really did fuck things up. The consequences have damned her.  
  
She traces everything back to the beginning. Maybe it was that first moment when she tempted fate: joining the mock trial team. Sixteen year-old Clarke never would have joined mock trial. Maybe it was approaching Lexa at the tournament, exchanging email addresses and then emails. Maybe it was spending more time with her mom, or agreeing to meet Lexa's parents at graduation, or not taking that project manager job.  
  
Or maybe it was as simple as how she packaged that lava lamp on move-in day, surrounded by newspapers and pillows, as though saving a $15 lava lamp from its fated end would somehow save her from her fated end.  
  
Still, she's tempted fate and it seems like fate's always worked out in its expected way.  
  
But there's this.  
  
She and Lexa are supposed to be together at twenty-three. It isn't exactly a happy "together," but she'd rather that than alone, she thinks. Except she did this. She just broke up with Lexa.  
  
Maybe this will be when she goes back to her real life. She dreams of reality. Twenty-four. The first twenty-four. Their double bed full of pillows and law books pushed up against the bedroom wall. Lexa rolling over, mouth slightly ajar, as Clarke pushes her closer to her side of the bed. Lexa frowning in her sleep.  
  
She wants that back because this life has felt so much worse. Forced to relive her father's death. Forced to watch her mother grieve. Forced to fight a relentless and insurmountable fight for happiness with the woman she loves.  
  
Forced to know exactly what's coming and helpless to change any of it.


	9. Twenty-Four

New York must have been part of it. Part of the misery. Not much, but a small part. She likes the slower urban life - the faux-South - of DC. It doesn't hurt that her mom is a fifteen minute metro ride from her apartment. It also doesn’t hurt that she can live in something larger than a shoebox.  
  
They're getting on now better than she ever expected. Dinner at her mom's once a week, monthly outings to the museums and plays and galleries around town. Even a few meet-ups with Raven every so often, when she's not loaded down by whatever it is that keeps her busy at NASA. (Clarke swears she listens when Raven talks, but she always ends up feeling more lost than before Raven even started.)  
  
Being without Lexa is tougher than she imagined in most ways, but there's some part of her that finally feels free. In the morning, she misses the steaming mug of coffee Lexa would deliver to her bedside. At that point, Lexa had usually been awake for at least two hours, sometimes going for an early morning run before she started her studies. At midday, she misses the idle texting, the "How's your day going?" and the funny stories about Lexa's Con Law professor. In the evening, she misses the warmth of Lexa's body, the way she'd grip onto Clarke in her sleep and sigh into her hair.  
  
But there's a freedom without Lexa that she'd never considered. It's an opportunity to explore and be completely selfish. She doesn't worry about buying the right things at the grocery store or staying up until Lexa gets home from the library. She doesn't worry about making ends meet for two. She doesn't worry about pleasing Lexa or about pleasing Lexa’s demanding parents. (Though the more she thinks about it, the more she thinks that was never a part of the problem, anyway.)  
  
She's got a few commissions now and a gallery showing in a few months. It's not exactly enough to sustain her through the year, but DC is a lot cheaper than New York and she's hoping that the gallery showing will help out with that. Worst case, Raven's friend Jasper has a bartending gig she can slide into for a while.  
  
She doesn't wait around for anyone else, and it's freeing. She takes herself out to dinner, to the movies. She drinks wine on her fire escape and looks out over the tops of the domed buildings of DC.  
  
And holidays have actually turned out to be her favorite.  
  
Her first DC holiday upon her return was Easter. It was a quiet affair, just Clarke and her mom and her memories from several Easters past, including the one at sixteen with her grandmother and her dad and egg dye all over her fingers. (There are actually two memories of that Easter at sixteen - the first sixteen and the second - but she tries not to think about that stuff so much anymore. Dramatic changes and all, it doesn't look like there's any going back.)

 

 

  
  
Her mom has been planning this Christmas get together for a while now. She's told Clarke that she wants to start a tradition with Chinese food and Scrabble and movies, just the way Jake would have wanted it. Raven comes over after her own family's affair, new boyfriend, Wick, in tow. (When Raven first told her about Wick, a heaviness pulled her down for several days. It's not that she wasn't happy for Raven, it's that she couldn't tear her mind away from Lexa.)  
  
"Is it Scrabble time yet?" She's not sure why Raven's so excited. She usually comes in last place. In a typical game, it'd be Clarke or her mom taking first and Raven almost always in last. Only once did Raven beat them all, on the word "yagi," which is some sort of space antennae or something. Clarke lost on the challenge and Raven flipped the board in delight. They found the missing "Y" tile months later. Of course, when Lexa was there for Scrabble games, she always won.  
  
"I'm ready for you and your 'yagi.' You're going down Reyes." Raven's found that same devilish grin from her last win.  
  
"Your 'yagi'?" Wick’s face screws up in confusion, like ‘yagi’ might be a dirty word.

Clarke knows he's not NASA, but she can't remember exactly how Raven met him. It fell somewhere in that story about Wick that she tuned out when she started thinking about Lexa. Raven probably knows she wasn't listening, but she hasn't called Clarke out on it yet.  
  
"Long story, Wick, but it's definitely not what you think it means. You want to play?"  
  
"Uh, sure."  
  
Her mom's voice from the kitchen breaks the monotony in the living room. "You all want cocoa?"  
  
"Only if you spike it, Ms. G." She’s got a different devilish grin this time. It’s the one that kind of grosses Clarke out. Raven always seemed to have a thing for her mom. She quirks her eyebrow at Clarke.  
  
"I guess you're old enough for that now, Raven, but that joke wasn't so funny eight years ago."  
  
"Has it been that long?" Raven yells back.  
  
Her mom appears in the doorway. "Since you first asked me to spike your drink? I think so."  
  
It feels like they're flirting. Wick's staring into the fire and Clarke's uncomfortable.

"You're first, Raven." Her mom disappears back into the kitchen.  
  
"No, last time's winner is always first."  
  
Last time's winner.

"Well, Lexa's not here, so you're first." She can feel it come out meaner than she wants. Probably some combination of this weird flirtation and memories of Lexa in Wick’s space by the fire.   


"Sorry. I wasn't thinking."  
  
Clarke just shakes her head. The grin disappears as Raven doles out the tiles and they silently arrange them. She can hear her mom stirring the milk in the kitchen. Wick's still staring into the fire.   
  
"You know that she quit law school, right?" Raven asks, her voice thin.  
  
Clarke looks at her for too long, playing her words back again and again. "What?"  
  
"Yeah." Raven looks away, like maybe she wants to take it all back.  
  
Lexa quit. She can't fathom it. There's no "first time around" to think back on, no first experiences of first memories of when Lexa quit. She'd never considered the possibility.  
  
"Lexa did?" She hears herself whisper like she's looking down at the whole conversation. Looking down at Raven with her wide eyes, looking down at Wick, who seems to know something's up but just glances between the two of them, looking down at the empty Scrabble board. "Quit? There's absolutely no way."  
  
Raven is nodding. Clarke just stares. "She did. I...uh...heard it through a friend of a friend."  
  
Clarke's up and moving toward the kitchen before she realizes what she's doing. "Mom, did you hear that?"  
  
"Hear what, honey?"  
  
And then she's in the kitchen and looking at her mom. "Lexa quit law school."  
  
"Uh." The spoon stops stirring but she can only see her back.  
  
"Mom?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Did you know that Lexa quit law school?"  
  
She sees her head dop and Clarke's sure she knows. "She emailed me, yes."  
  
"What?" She feels her face twist up and tears spring to her eyes.  
  
"We talk occasionally,” she says, turning to face Clarke. “She asks for advice and I give it to her. Honey, don't be upset, she just needed some guidance. She asked me not to tell you."  
  
"And she means more than your own daughter?"  
  
"That's not what it means at all and you know it. What good would it have done for me to tell you?"  
  
"How long have you guys been emailing?"

 

She remembers back to their fight after graduation, when her mom forced her to call Lexa after avoiding her calls for hours. And the time when she woke up on her mom's birthday to her and Lexa deep in conversation, her mom's hand on Lexa's shoulder, Lexa's head hanging low. And after their break up, just a year ago, when her mom somehow knew more about Lexa's inner workings than she did.  
  
"Gosh, a while. Since before graduation."  
  
"What?"  
  
"I think she just needed a different perspective."  
  
It's all too much and it makes her want to throw up. Raven knows. Her mom has known. Lexa's supposed to be out of her life. She's supposed to be miserable in New York and finishing law school and worrying about pleasing her parents. She's not supposed to somehow find happiness without Clarke. She wants it all back. The first life. The misery. The terrible job and the mom and best friend who won't talk to her. It all seems preferable to this betrayal.  
  
"So, are we still playing?" she hears his deep voice as she reaches the top of the stairs.  
  
"Sorry, Wick. I may have created a crisis. Let me go talk to Clarke." She wants to lock the door, but she's too old for that.  
  
Raven sits on the top step next to her. "So you heard it from my mom?"  
  
"Yeah." She's staring ahead and Raven's staring at her.  
  
"Do you and my mom often talk about Lexa?"  
  
"Honestly?" Raven asks with a sigh, like she knows to be honest, even if she doesn't want to be. "She comes up occasionally."  
  
"Really?"  
  
"Yeah. She was a big part of your life, Clarke, and ours too, in a way. It's clear that you miss her. And, based on what Abby's said, that she misses you."  
  
"What do you mean?" she bites out. Sure, she misses Lexa, but she hasn't been obvious.  
  
"It's not really for me to say exactly, but she's back at American and she's working for the Senator again."  
  
It's one thing for Lexa to quit law school. It's another thing completely for her to be romping around DC and working for the Senator again. Lexa's taken every one of her suggestions but has just written her out of her life now? She feels the anger bubble up.  
  
"Why didn't anyone tell me?" she seethes as she stands and turns to her room.  
  
Raven stands too. "I didn't realize we were supposed to."  
  
"I need some time. Sorry, Raven."  
  
The game definitely isn't going on downstairs. Or if it is, it's the most subdued game of Scrabble ever played in the Griffin household. A few hours later, the sounds of goodbyes and the door quietly closing wake her up for a moment. She should feel bad, but she figures she just needs to sleep it off. They have to understand her perspective on this.  
  
  


  
  
The next morning she feels hungover. It's almost 11 o'clock when she makes her way downstairs, but her mom is still in her robe, standing over the coffee like it's early in the morning.  
  
"Will you tell me where she is?" She can't think of anything except her mom and Lexa talking behind her back. She wonders how much her name comes into the conversation.  
  
"I don't know where she is."  
  
"You know that she's at American. You know that she's working for the Senator."

 

“Raven told you?” She swears there’s a hint of disappointment on her face, but she doesn’t want to that look into an argument. At least not immediately. She’ll save it for ammo later, if necessary.

 

“Yes.”  
  
"Honey, I don't know where she is right now. If you want to see her, then call her."  
  
She's so mad at the logic of her response. Call her. Duh. She could have done that last night. Lexa hasn't changed her number, she's sure of it.

 

But Clarke hasn't changed her number either.  
  
"Why hasn't she called me?" Her voice sounds thin and weak and she hates everything about herself but she can't stop.  
  
"I don't know, baby," her mom says softly. She hands Clarke a cup of coffee and puts her hand on her shoulder. "I haven't heard from her in a while. You can call her, you know."  
  
"I just don't understand why she'd do all this to be happy but not come and find me. Was it me who made her so unhappy? Did I make her so unhappy that when she finally decides to chase her dreams she talks to my mom but wants nothing to do with me?”  
  
"Oh, Clarke. Sometimes relationships just don't work out and it's not quite anyone's fault."  
  
"I need to find her, mom."  
  
"Talk to her. Call her. It might help you both."  
  
"Why would she need help with this? What did she tell you?"  
  
"Nothing, Clarke, honestly. It's just a mother's intuition."  
  
"I feel like you're not telling me things, mom. Like you're protecting her."  
  
Her mother steps back and runs a hand through her hair with a deep sigh.  
  
"I will tell you everything I know. You’re my daughter and I love you and I will tell you anything if you think it will help you. What do you want to know, Clarke?"  
  
"When did she come back?"  
  
"In the late summer. She was accepted to American's grad program and had a part-time job lined up with the Senator."  
  
"What's she doing in grad school?"  
  
"Something with politics, I don't remember exactly what."  
  
"What about her family? Are they still talking to her?"  
  
"They're upset, but not as upset as she thought they'd be. Her brother Aden is doing well. He's gone back to school, so that probably helps with things."  
  
"Aden did?"  
  
She's surprised to hear his name. He'd been the source of Lexa's ill temper a few times in their last year together, but he was usually a reason for her trek out to Brighton Beach. Something about looking for Aden or talking to Aden. Clarke knew he was a troublemaker but she doesn't remember hearing about him dropping out of school. Then again, she may just be misremembering. She'd usually tune out as soon as she heard anything Brighton Beach related anyway.  
  
"Yes. Lexa seemed very happy to share that news."  
  
"When does she work at the Senator's office?"  
  
"Oh Clarke, I don't know specifics like that. I know that she's studying a lot, but then you probably do, too. That's Lexa."  
  
"She's studying a lot? At American? I have to go."  
  
She imagines Lexa in her old carrel at the Environmental Science library, pencil tucked behind her ear and glasses slipping down her nose. She imagines Lexa hunched over their desk in the Bronx, notebooks piled high on either side of her. She imagines Lexa falling asleep next to her, laptop close to falling out of the bed, a streak of highlighter across her cheek. They're not visions of the future and for some reason she's desperate to know whether Lexa still studies the same.  She tries to imagine, but she just can't. She cries harder than she has since they broke up.  
  


 

  
  
It's still less than an hour's metro ride away, albeit from another direction. The tears dry sometime halfway through and she figures she must look at least halfway crazy, but that can't be a new scenario for the people who regularly ride public transportation in DC. When she's finally off the metro, she curses herself for living in such a daze. Her hair is greasy from her missed morning shower and she's wearing stained grey Georgetown sweats and Lexa's old Columbia Law hoodie.  
  
The walk over reminds her of graduation day and disposable cameras and sweaty palms.  
  
Somehow, she's forgotten this.  
  
It looks like the same table.  
  
There’s the same study bun.  
  
Maybe even the same pencil pressed against her lips, then to the page, and back to her lips.  
  
Lexa's face is thinner. Her cheekbones seem higher, her jawline more pronounced. She doesn't look different from the last time Clarke saw her, just different from the last time Clarke saw her here.  
  
"I'm glad you're a creature of habit." Same line. Clarke's suddenly conscious of her appearance again. Lexa's wearing a button-down, sleeves rolled up, pressed slacks. Clarke wonders if she's come from somewhere else, wonders just how much of Lexa's life she's interrupting.  
  
"Clarke?" The pencil bounces off the table and falls to the floor when she looks up. 

 

There’s several moments when nothing happens and it’s terrifying. Lexa looks at her, mouth slightly parted, eyes open a little wider than usual. She feels her mouth go dry and wishes she’d have just opted to call, or maybe email, or maybe do nothing at all.

 

"How…how did you know I was here?"  
  
"I bullied my mom into telling me." Clarke sits down across from her. The library's not even close to full and she remembers that it's technically a holiday on the American U. campus. Most libraries should be closed, but not this one. Just the same, she sits so that she won't call more attention to herself.  
  
"Oh." Lexa's eyes dart from Clarke's eyes to her lips to her greasy hair and her sweatshirt. Clarke's not sure if Lexa's judging her appearance or if she's remembering what she misses most, or if she's thanking her lucky stars that they're not dating any more. She really wishes she'd at least taken a shower before coming over.  
  
"She may have let it spill that you two have been emailing for a while. I told her that I wanted to see you. But...I can leave you…if you want." She doesn't want to say the last part, but it seems right. Lexa has her number.

  
"No. I came here, to DC, for you. Because of you, I mean." Her cheeks turn the slightest bit red and she looks between Clarke and the floor.

 

“Why didn’t you call me?” Her voice wavers and she worries that she’s about to betray the anxious, scared girl who was talking to her mom a few hours ago.

 

“I wanted to make sure that this was the right decision for me, first. You were always trying to convince me that this work would make me happy, but I had to make sure that I did it for me and not just to please you.”

 

“Does it make you happy?”

 

“I think so.”  
  
Clarke leans forward, hoping to capture Lexa's eyes. "You don't hate me?"  
  
"I just...can't believe this is happening. Where did you come from?" Lexa's obviously flustered. Her cheeks are flushed and she twitches the fingers on her right hand where the pencil might be if it hadn’t fallen to the floor.   
  
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you. I can go."  
  
"No. No," she says just as Clarke starts to push the chair back. "Why would I hate you?" Lexa's face twists up like it's the most ridiculous thing Clarke's ever said. (And she knows she's said some ridiculous things.)  
  
Clarke rubs her hand against the back of her neck and looks away. "Where do I start?" She's too afraid to look at Lexa, too afraid to confirm what she knows is true.  
  
"Stop." Lexa's hand is on the table between them. Her long fingers. Her neatly trimmed nails. That one cuticle on her left pinky from where her anxieties physically manifest. Clarke remembers playfully slapping that hand away from Lexa's mouth's idle work many times. Her cuticles would bleed and Clarke would tsk her and Lexa would bring her hand back to her mouth without thinking. (And sometimes Clarke would grab those fingers and bring them to her lips and try to kiss away those worries.)  
  
"No, you should hate me. I didn't listen to you. You knew how I was feeling, how I would feel about everything. You knew I wasn't happy and I ignored you everything you said."  
  
The old Clarke would want to agree. She would even want to store that old 'I told ya so' for a lighter day, when they could laugh about it. But it's been too long for 'I told ya so.'  
  
"I think maybe you should hate me. I never really tried to understand. I always assumed that your father was some awful guy forcing you to do the things you did."  
  
She's had too much time to replay all of those arguments and fights and phone calls.  
  
"No," Lexa says with a sigh. "It was just me trying to live up to the expectations I thought he had for me." Her lip quivers a little and Clarke knows that even though Lexa's taken this huge step to leave law school and abandon her family's wishes, everything is still raw.  
  
"He wasn't mad that you quit law school?"  
  
"Oh no, he was livid." It's said with a smile, but Clarke can see tears spring to her eyes. Lexa looks down at the highlighter that she's sliding back and forth across the table. "We didn't speak for a few months, but Mama still made me come over for dinner once a week. We'd eat in silence, but he'd always make sure I took home leftovers. It probably helped that Aden got his act together. He's not going to be a doctor or anything, but at least he's back in school and not hanging out with those guys anymore."  
  
Just one trip to Brighton Beach under her belt, Clarke can still picture it. Lexa's father thin-lipped and arms crossed, eating quickly and rushing out the door and back to work without a word. Lexa's mother coldly doting, bringing seconds without prompting. The image has had some time to settle and doesn't seem as foreign as it might have seemed just a year ago.  
  
"So are things alright with you guys now?"  
  
"With Tato? Yeah, I think he's disappointed that he's not going to have a lawyer or a doctor in the family, but he came down last month and visited me in the Capitol. He met the Senator and had his picture taken with him with one of those stupid disposable cameras and everything. So I think he's becoming more and more okay with it. It helps that Mama said she never really cared, as long as I was working hard."  
  
Clarke feels the tears streaming down her cheeks despite her attempt at a smile.  
  
"God, I feel like such an ass."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"I just had the wrong idea about them. I never really gave them a chance."  
  
Lexa's eyes meet hers from across the table and she sees them well with tears. She knows that Lexa's probably fighting too hard to keep them at bay, but it wrenches a sob from her just the same.  
  
"I used to tell you that you wouldn't understand."  
  
"I know. I'm sorry."  
  
"It's ok," Lexa says. She reaches her hand across the table, palm turned up and toward Clarke. "I'm here now. I'm working hard. I'm happy."  
  
Clarke's hand goes to Lexa's without thinking.  
  
"Are you?"  
  
"I can think of a few things that would make me happier," she says with a slight smile, "but can't we all?"  
  
"That's true."  
  
There's a few things Clarke knows could make her happier: more commissioned work, a more steady income, a few more friends to help pass the time.  
  
But somehow, in the last year, she's found some clarity around this whole do-over thing, too.  
  
She knows that there will always be things that can make her happier and there will always be things that will tear her apart. It's the things that threaten to undo her the most that are most worth her time and love. It's her relationship with her mom, and the memories she got to have (for a second time, even) with her dad.  
  
And it's Lexa. It's knowing Lexa and falling in love with Lexa and allowing Lexa to know her and love her, too.  
  
"I can think of something that would make me happier, too."  
  
"What's that?"  
  
"Will you forgive me?"  
  
"For what?"  
  
"For picking those fights. For probably just making things worse."  
  
"No," she says with a little laugh. "I won't forgive you for that. Remember how you used to always talk about fate?"  
  
It scares Clarke to hear Lexa bring it up, like fate is a jinx that, once in the open, might doom them both. She feels her palm dampen against Lexa's, still resting on the table.  
  
"I think that's probably just part of our story, Clarke."  
  
"Is our story over?"  
  
"Is our story over?" Lexa repeats and Clarke's feels almost sure of the jinx.  
  
"I don't know," Lexa says, "do you want it to be over?"  
  
She shakes her head, slowly at first, then faster until her face breaks and she sobs, "No. I think about you a lot."  
  
"Me too."  
  
Lexa's hand grips at hers and it makes her feel that this is her real life, this twenty-four is the way it's always supposed to be.  
  
"Do you want to maybe take a walk? Get out of this stuffy library for a bit?" She smiles a little through the tears.  
  
"That sounds familiar," Lexa says, standing up and pulling Clarke with her. One hand firmly grips Clarke's, while the other smooths out her shirt and pants. "Did you happen to just stumble in here looking for a book, too?"  
  
"Very funny. That line should sound familiar. I've used it on you before."  
  
"Well it worked this time." It takes a little bit longer, but Lexa uses her one free hand to stuff her books and pencil and highlighters into her bag. "How about we walk to dinner? I'm starving."  
  
"I'd love that."  
  
  
  
  
There's something different about Lexa here at twenty-four. It's something Clarke's never experienced before. Not at twenty-three or twenty-four when they were just going through the motions, nor at twenty-one or twenty-two when things were fresh and fun.  
  
It's in the way she walks, with her bag casually strung over her shoulder and a bounce in her step like she's wearing new shoes.  
  
It's in the way that she laughs, full and with abandon, eyes crinkling in delight.  
  
It's in the way that she sees Clarke and the way that Clarke sees herself reflected in Lexa's eyes.  
  
She's free.  
  


 

  
  
Clarke thinks it's funny how it translates to so many areas of Lexa's life, including her new apartment. It's big and open and airy and inviting. It's everything that Harlem (the first time) and the Bronx (the second time) are not.  
  
There's a picture of Lexa's family on the nightstand and a picture of Lexa and Clarke tucked into the corner of the frame. It's validates everything, in a way. It makes it worth the (still) greasy hair and sweats and the fight with her mom (who she'll have to give a big hug to) and the uncomfortable metro ride. But it's also worth the arguments and the misunderstandings and even the break up.  
  
It feels like fate and it doesn't feel like a jinx.  
  
She's somehow convinced Lexa to let her into her home, to allow her to take a shower, to slip under her covers. If the roles were reversed, it'd take her no convincing at all. Maybe it didn't really take Lexa any convincing at all, either. Lexa slid under the covers before Clarke had even stepped into the shower, eyelids heavy and head sinking into her big feather pillows.  
  
Lexa's eyes are closed when Clarke steps out of the bathroom. She lets the towel fall down to the floor and turns off the overhead light before slipping under Lexa's cotton sheets.  
  
"I want to remember," Clarke says as she tucks a wisp of hair behind Lexa's ear. Lexa's eyes blink open, eyelids heavy, pupils dark and full.  
  
"Remember what?" She leans into Clarke's hand, her voice barely there.  
  
"Us. Being in love."  
  
"What can I do?"  
  
"Make love to me."  
  
Lexa shifts to sink her body on top of Clarke's.  
  
"That was never your line," Lexa says with a whisper and a smile.  
  
Clarke pokes a finger into Lexa's ribs and she squirms between Clarke's legs, her lean, lithe body weighing heavily against Clarke's as she giggles and shakes.  
  
"You can use my line on me in the morning." Clarke smirks at the thought of what happens in the morning after a night like this.  
  
It's as though Lexa didn't hear. Her brow is furrowed, hand outstretched to cup Clarke's cheek. "Are you sure you want to do this?"  
  
"I'm terrified," Clarke says as she leans into Lexa's palm. She closes her eyes and takes a moment to feel Lexa's skin against her skin.  
  
"Me too." Lexa's voice is close. Her breath puffs against Clarke's lips as she tilts her head back.  
  
People don't think Lexa's this soft. She's full of hard edges. There's the obvious hard edges: her jaw line, her tattoos, her pointed glare. Then there's the underlying hard edges: her terseness, her devotion to academics, her Eastern European single-mindedness. But on nights like these, Clarke's so grateful to know this Lexa that no one else knows.  
  
"I love you." Lexa whispers it against her lips, then against her collarbone, against the soft skin of her belly, and against her inner thigh.  
  
Her fingers burn against Clarke's skin and she feels like she can't stay still under Lexa's touch. Her body shakes and rocks and she feels like she's on the verge of losing her breath again and again. Her fingers move against Lexa's body of their own volition, as though the future had been written in the past.  
  
It builds way too quickly.  
  
When Clarke pleads in a strained whisper, "Together," Lexa quickly buries her face into Clarke's neck.  
  
Clarke pulls Lexa back. It's instinctual. She craves her eyes, her lips, the way her eyebrows knit when they're on the precipice together like this.  
  
"Clarke." Lexa whispers it like a prayer before death.  
  
She can't keep her eyes open, but she feels it. She feels everything fall into place. Together.  
  


 

  
  
  
The next morning, Lexa's fingers on her cheek wake her. "I don't think I can use your line," she says in her hoarse morning voice.  
  
"You can't?" Clarke's still blinking her eyes into focus and her own morning voice sounds just as hoarse and worn as Lexa's. "I think that line's pretty hot."  
  
"It had a time and place."  
  
"And now's not the time or place?" Clarke giggles.  
  
"I mean, I could go for it."  
  
She swings her leg over Lexa's hips. "Fuck me, Lex." She punctuates it with a slow grind against Lexa's abdomen.  
  
Lexa's hands grip Clarke's hips, assisting her slow push and pull. "Yeah, I can definitely do that."  
  


 

  
  
  
  
She may miss this the most. The slow unwind after sex. How her heart syncopates to the beat of Lexa's as she collapses on top of her. How her panting breath fades into a slow and even rhythm. How Lexa's fingers trace across the soft skin of her thighs, to the muscles of her back. How their eyes meet and rest on one another, devout and uninhibited.  
  
"I don't want to hear it," Lexa whispers. Clarke can feel her smile against the skin of her shoulder, but she nudges up to look at Lexa just the same.  
  
"Hear what?"  
  
"I told you so."  
  
It hurts to think that Lexa might be expecting it, even as a half joke, but then she remembers that a year has passed and, while she's learned and grown, twelve hours might not be enough to reveal that.  
  
"Ok." She reaches her hand out to cup Lexa's cheek and Lexa's smile fades.

 

"I think 'told you so' doesn't work anyway. Sometimes, you can't tell anyone anything."  
  
"Yeah, I've been learning that. For a while now, actually."  
  
If Lexa only knew.  
  
Sometimes she thinks about telling her.  
  
Sometimes she just wants to tell someone.  
  
But her mom's been fragile and Lexa's been encumbered and she's been so used to having her secrets.  
  
Sixteen the first time. Sixteen the second.  
  
Losing a parent the first time. Knowing you're going to lose a parent the second.  
  
Twenty-four the first time. Twenty-four the second.  
  
Fighting against fading love the first time. Fighting against fate the second.  
  
"Did you know?" Lexa's eyes flit from her eyes to her lips to the blush that’s starting in her cheeks.  
  
"Know what?"  
  
"That we'd break up?" She can barely hear Lexa's whisper, but she thinks this has been what she's been waiting for. She hasn’t decided whether she’ll let anyone in on this strange life she’s been living.   
  
Still, she can't let on without some clarity. She tries to play it off. "I was the one who broke up with you. So, yes?" She should smile or laugh or pinch Lexa, just to add that last bit of brevity. But she can't.   
  
"No, I mean...did you  _know_? Like that time in the library," tears spring to Lexa's eyes and roll quickly down her cheeks and onto the sheets, "when we were nineteen and you were crying. When you knew that we'd be together. Did you know back then that we'd eventually break up?"  
  
They never talked about that time. There were only two other times that it came up - this weird ' _knowing,'_ as Lexa put it.  
  
One was their first meeting at twenty-one, among the marbled tiles of crowded hallway in the Capitol, just like Clarke had said she would. Lexa’s wide green eyes found Clarke's, her mouth couldn't quite close, and her brow was permanently furrowed. Clarke had told their future and Lexa submitted.  
  
The other time was that moment in the Brumidi Corridor in the Capital Building, also at twenty-one, when Clarke found herself overwhelmed and alone and suddenly 'without.' Lexa pulled Clarke toward her, tucked Clarke's head under her chin, and whispered a few soothing words. Clarke had predicted it, back at nineteen and in the American University library. Clarke knew in that hallway in the Capitol that Lexa had more than heard her. Lexa had listened to her tell their future. She'd thought about it. She'd replayed it in her mind. She'd committed Clarke's words to memory. How else to explain her ability to comfort Clarke years later? But they'd never talked about it.  
  
"No." She answers. It’s the truth. They’re in completely uncharted territory and Clarke has no idea what’s next.

 

She wonders, now that they're talking about fate, now that they’re in a new realm of their lives, if it's about to all disappear.

 

That’s what happens in these weird sci-fi stories, right?

 

She's about to wake up in her sixteen year-old body with her sixteen year-old life.  
  
"No?"  
  
"It didn't happen that way." Her heart pounds and her mouth goes dry.  
  
"How did it happen?"  
  
"Doesn't matter." It's enough. She can't bear to talk about it any longer.  
  
It's quiet for a long time and Clarke can tell that Lexa's deciding whether or not she wants to be the judge of whether it matters or not. She deserves to know. Clarke knows she does. She just can't fathom how she can possibly explain any of it.  
  
"Thank you," Lexa finally whispers.  
  
"For what?"  
  
"For leaving me."  
  
"Really?" Clarke laughs, her whole body shaking. "It was one of the worst times of my life."  
  
"Me too. We didn't have a choice. You weren't going to love me for much longer."  
  
"Yeah." Still, she's pretty sure she loved Lexa at twenty-four. She wonders if there's a twenty-four year-old "other" Clarke out there, figuring that out right now, too.  
  
"Instead," Lexa says, "it looks like we've traded in a rough couple of years for a lifetime of loving memories."  
  
"A lifetime, huh? Is that a marriage proposal? Because if it is, I'm going to need a redo when we're not naked and sweaty."  
  
Lexa pales for a moment, hands freezing and eyes on Clarke.  
  
"I'm teasing, babe," Clarke says, as she nudges her forehead against Lexa's.  
  
Both of Lexa's hands cradle her face. "I'd like to marry you, one day. I think it's written in the stars."  
  
That's one element of fate Clarke can't predict, but it seems pretty dead on.  
  
“Cheesy."  
  
"I can't help it when I'm with you," Lexa says, pulling Clarke's face to kiss along her brow, her cheeks, her nose, and chin.  
  
"What am I going to do with you?" Clarke asks, squirming away.  
  
"Love me back?"  
  
"I've loved you for longer than you will ever know."  
  
Somehow, she knows Lexa will tuck that line away and think about it for a long time to come. Maybe she does know, after all.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

She’ll never know the answers. There’s some strange comfort in always having the questions but never the answers.

 

Is there another Clarke and Lexa out there?

 

Are there several?

 

Are they happy?

 

Is there a situation where her dad lives?

 

How did it happen?

 

Why?

 

She stops to think about it sometimes.

 

Most times, it's fleeting.

 

It’s a quick thought to what might have been or why.

 

There are never any answers.

 

There’s a constant, though ever incrementally diminishing sense that this life will be snatched away from her.

 

It's tiresome.

 

Especially when, despite the imperfections that linger - some major and some minor - she doesn't want things to be any different.

 

When these questions pop into her mind, she renews her vow to live in the moment, with the people she has, with the people she loves.

 

It’s an extra reminder of why this life is so special. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblring at factorsofex


End file.
